This is not really my kind of movie. At the moment I need feelgood and uplifting. But I'm glad I watched this story of what happens when you allow companies to neglect and mismanage a dangerous resource such as nuclear power, and compound that crime by trying to abandon whole populations to save face. It's a cautionary tale but told at a human level.
We meet the ordinary families and men and women who work at the plant. witness their differences of opinion about the humble nature of their existence. They're good natured, hard working (mostly) and not without their dreams. Some of them know they are being exploited and want to get out, but family ties get in their way.
Management cuts corners on maintenance, the individuals who raise the alarm about it are drowned out and sidelined - a practice that goes from the shop floor to the Blue House, where reports that the President should see are kept from him.
And then an earthquake leads to disaster, chaotic failure to properly evacuate the area (no proper plan in place) ... just one area of complete incompetence after another, all doggedly upheld by cabinet members, until the president pulls himself together and gets a grip.
At the end of the day the only people who can do anything to stop further meltdown with disastrous consequences not only for the area but for the whole country, are the engineers who have only just escaped and are still close to site in an under-equipped medical tent from which all but one nurse had fled.
All are suffering from radiation sickness and know they are going to die from this soon, but if nothing further is done the plant will completely meltdown and flood the country with radiation. So they volunteer to go back in to fix the coolant leak and when that fails, come up with a plan which will save all but one of them, who volunteers to stay.
This film had me in turns bloody furious with Korea's culture of deference, cover-up and the delegation of responsibility to those who have least power and resources, and heartbroken for the little people who knew their chances of surviving perhaps even weeks were low and volunteered to potentially die even sooner. The picture of ordinary people sacrificing themselves would make anyone weep, and I did - buckets.
This is a fiction - reminiscent of other disasters but not - as far as I know - showing the same events, causes etc.
It's an extremely well made film: well written, well produced and paced, excellent acting from all involved, including some well known faces and some relative unknowns (to me). The music at times was intrusive, but latterly became hauntingly beautiful, and added to the depth of feeling.
It was nominated for a number of awards, from Best actor, Best Director to a number of technical awards - lord knows how it managed not to win any - though perhaps the unveiled criticism of government failures may have made it a risky choice. That may also have been instrumental in it being the first Korean film to be pre-sold to Netflix only weeks before its theatrical release. All this is pure speculation though.
Just know that this is an exceptional film and even though it's pretty harrowing, I highly recommend it.