Since the disaster all over Asia in 2004, when a Tsunami hit and claimed countless victims, several water-based disaster films have been produced in that area of the world. India gave us Dasavatharam (and also Dam 999, but I haven’t seen it yet), Thailand the extremely bad Tsunami 2022, South Korea the not-bad-at-all Haenduae, China the okay-ish Super Typhoon and in 2008 it was Japan’s turn with 252: Signal of Life, which deals with a tsunami hitting Tokyo. Sure, there’s also Japan sinks from 2006, but it deals with so many different disasters - it’s their version of 2012 and also a new version of the book that was made into the Toho masterpiece The Submersion of Japan.
I’m an emotional man and that’s also what makes me ticks when it comes to big, expensive mainstream movies. If they don’t affect me emotionally I get bored. It’s somehow easier watching soulless low budget movies because they can offer so much else - fun actors, violence, creative filmmaking etc. But a movie with a 250 million dollar budget and delivering zero on the emotional scale is completely worthless all the way through. That’s why I like watching Japanese blockbusters. They’re big on everything, EVERYTHING, to the border of being boring and visually cold, but the emotions are always there.
In 252: Signal of Life a tsunami strikes Tokyo and we follow a bunch of survivors - including the hero, a former fireman who quit because of a mistake that killed a colleague, an inventor who invested the last of his money into a new form of water cleaner for a tropical fish tanks, a South Korean illegal immigrant, a young doctor who can’t work because of his father’s depression and of course deaf little girl. They’re all trapped deep down in a subway station, not in use, and now they need to survive everything from water, loss of blood… and of course themselves. At the same time we follow the heroic rescue team above, who against all odds stays in the middle of the storm to save lives!
This film doesn’t deliver anything new at all actually. It’s an orgy of cliches, reused since the sixties and earlier. I mean, what is a disaster film if not a monster film without monsters? There’s buildings crumbling, massive amount of water killing people and of course the human drama in-between. Oh, and hail. Big fucking hail. This is the second time I start watching it and the first time I actually watched it all the way through.The first time it didn’t get me stuck. but somehow - maybe I’m in a better mood today - it went easier. The human drama is excellent, if a bit predictable, and the special effects is quite fine. You buy the characters and you buy their problems, which often is quite rare in modern disaster films. Just the idea with the tropical fish tank cleaner is good and even if it’s not mentioned, you can almost guess that the inventor have a much bigger invention on his hands than he ever could imagine. But it’s never said out loud, which is cool.
The special effects are mostly digital but works fine. The panic scenes down in the subway is excellent and haunting, tragic and chaotic. It reminded me of the nightmares I’ve had being stuck deep down in the Estonia ferry, where there’s no chance you’ll survive. As always it’s the human tragedies who carries the disaster scenes, and as always it works. Even if I love the huge scenes of destruction in 2012 it’s so big and so impersonal it more becomes “fun” than tragic, and this movie avoids it without ruining the fun of seeing thousands of people getting killed as silly, mainstream entertainment.
252: Signal of Life is no masterpiece, but it works as a good disaster film. And that’s not bad at all!
"This film doesn’t deliver anything new at all actually. It’s an orgy of cliches, reused since the sixties and earlier."
By your description, it does sound something that has been made before.
"Oh, and hail. Big fucking hail."
Yeah....hail can be nasty...ahhahhahahhaha
"252: Signal of Life is no masterpiece, but it works as a good disaster film. And that’s not bad at all!"
Well....you weren´t bored by it.....good review and thanks, never seen it.
Posted by: Megatron | March 25, 2014 at 00:06