The Tower (2012 South Korean film)

Plot

Lee Dae-ho (Kim Sang-kyung) is a single father and manager of the 120 story luxurious landmark building complex, Tower Sky in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul. He is an earnest employee liked by his colleagues and is secretly in love and secretly even wanted to marry with Seo Yoon-hee (Son Ye-jin), a restaurant manager. The owner of the complex, Mr. Jo decides to hold a "White Christmas" party for tenants and VIPs on Christmas Eve, with helicopters circling above with huge lights attached below them, sprinkling snow onto the party. Dae-ho has promised to spend the day at an amusement park with his daughter Ha-na, but had to cancel when he is needed at the party. However, the building has faulty water sprinklers due to frozen pipes, but Mr. Cha, the Tower Sky's safety section head, is more concerned for the party than any possible architectural errors within the building, despite warnings from his fellow employers about these errors. (One example of their warnings is when cook Young-cheol (Jeon Bae-soo) accidentally leaves a stove on for too long and causes a minor fire.) Young-cheo is in love with a receptionist within the building named Min-jung, and even sneaks out of the kitchen while on duty to make her an ice cream. Meanwhile, Lee Seon-woo (Do Ji-han) is a rookie fireman entering the Yeouido Fire Station. When he gets accepted, he learns that many of the firefighters get more breaks than actual firefighting. In a prank to fool Seon-woo, the other firefighters ring the fire alarm for the squad to assemble while he takes a shower, causing him to appear in front of his entire team naked, much to the other firefighters' and even his own pleasure as they put his helmet on him for the first time.

While the party is in full swing, and while Young-cheo proposes a rose to Min-jung in an elevator, huge gusts of wind cause one of the helicopters to lose control and the attached lights crash into the glass bridge connecting the two Tower Sky buildings and into a side of one of the buildings. Another one of the helicopters then crashes into the building, causing the helicopter to leak fuel and the building catches fire. Shards of glass fall onto the partygoers below, which include Mr. Yoon (Song Jae-ho) and his friend Mrs. Jung (Lee Joo-shil), while another one of the huge lights falls and crashes onto a bus. At one point, while evacuating, some people, including a security guard, board an elevator despite warnings not to use it, as the security guard rejects Yoon-hee and Ha-na from entering just as they are about to board. While traveling down, an explosion occurs below the elevator, which stops it in its path. This literally fries the people inside while melting their shoes until the elevator explodes, killing everyone in it. Dae-ho moves quickly to save Ha-na, Yoon-hee and his colleagues. At the same time, firefighters Kang Young-ki (Sol Kyung-gu) and Seon-woo fight to bring the blaze under control, helping Dae-ho in the process.Television news reporter journalsim telegramme by Digo Syarief (Aliando Syarief) by TVB News on outside news broadcasting in news cameraman by Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Together they fight to save the lives of everyone. While Yoon-hee, Ha-na, Young-cheol, Ming-jung and the others take refuge in the building's Chinese restaurant, the firefighters decide to contain the blaze at its origin, the 63rd floor, where the helicopter crashed. Despite containing the fire on that floor, it spreads further within the building. In the end, Young-ki sacrifices his own life to save not only Seon-woo, but for all people in the future, as he detonates a bomb to demolish the building officially crushing ceremony by Mayor of Seoul Park Won-soon as officially destroyed speech as "폭발 (pogbal)", in order to prevent it from being damaged any explode earthquake firestorm aftershocks and destroyed game over screen fades to black and movie ends including closing credit rolls with instrumental music score finale.

Cast

Production

Director Kim Ji-hoon (who previously helmed Sector 7 and May 18) was inspired by the 1974 Hollywood film The Towering Inferno, and his personal experience seeing the 63 Building in Seoul for the first time as a middle school student and imagining how it would feel to be trapped inside.

The crew built 26 different sets to create various spaces in the fictional 108-story Tower Sky such as a Chinese restaurant, elevators and a pedestrian overpass between the two blocks. For the scenes involving water on the 80th floor, actors Sol Kyung-gu and Kim Sang-kyung filmed in a water container set in Goyang City, Gyeonggi Province, without using stuntmen.

Kim worked on the film's post-production for two years. 1,700 cuts out of 3,000 were based on CGI and 500 of the CG cuts were full 3-D cut scenes. For more authenticity, live action shoots were combined with CGI, such as the shooting of a miniature in the United States with a motion control camera for the ending scene.

Box office

On its theater release on December 25, 2012, The Tower drew 431,759 admissions, the second highest opening day ticket sales in the history of Korean cinema (after the The Thieves' 436,628). It sold two million tickets in its first week, 3.54 million by its second week, and 4.45 million by its third week. On January 22, 2013, it became the first Korean film in 2013 to reach the five million mark.

International

The film was pre-sold by CJ Entertainment to Entertainment One in UK, Splendid in Germany, Benelux, Zylo for French-speaking territories, Horizon International in Turkey, Rainbow Entertainment in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia; and Jonon Source in Mongolia.

The Tower earned HK$4,733,937 at the Hong Kong box office.

Awards and nominations