An angry man releases a deadly virus on a passenger plane, and all hell breaks loose on the plane. Is there a cure, and will someone find it before all the passengers die? And do we care?
When I saw who starred in the movie, I was in heaven. It’s not every day you find Lee Byung-hun, Song Kang-ho, and Jeon Do-yeon in the same movie. Kim Nam-gil is also outstanding as the villain. I have always appreciated that actor. And it’s not every day you find such class actors in a pretty terrible movie.
The first hour is solid when we follow the passengers and the villain in the movie. The villain is asking strange questions at the airport, but no one who works at the airport takes him aside and questions him. So yeah, it’s that type of movie.
Then he releases a deadly virus on the plane, and after the plane has entered Japanese airspace, the movie falls apart. You wish the movie would have had a runtime of 1 hour and that the characters and the crew died, so you didn’t have to experience the rest of the movie.
In the first hour, Emergency Declaration could remind me of a more suspenseful Train to Busan. I loved the scene where the pilot loses control of the plane, and the plane is about to crash. That scene is fantastic! Rock and roll, baby! Rock and roll!
The last half hour of the movie is brutal. We get an overdose of cheesy South Korean melodrama that will kick your teeth in, and you will cry over how bad it is. It’s disgustingly bad, and you are missing your teeth!
We have the usual passengers who are selfish and cowards who only think of surviving, which creates two groups aboard the plane. The infected ones and the people who haven’t been infected yet. But luckily for us, it never escalates.
The government tries to find a solution to the problem, and what we witness with Song Kang-ho is just ridiculous. And surprise, surprise, there is a white devil in the movie, and since he’s white, he has to be evil. Evil, white man! You are responsible for all this! You are trying to kill the South Korean people with your virus! Yeah, it’s so stupid and tiresome.
The characters are poorly written, and I don’t understand how the movie was able to convince three of the best actors in South Korea to take part in this movie. The script after the first hour is terrible! This is not a movie for quality actors like these three actors, especially Jeon Do-yeon. And the role they put her in was the wrong role. Her character is uninteresting, almost like the rest of the characters. They are movie characters, and nothing more. The way they are written is so thin and embarrassing.
The first hour is solid, but then the fun is over. So I recommend you to skip this predictable thriller.