Firefighters - The Story of A South Korean Group of Fire Fighters Based on True Events

There were few new films released in Indonesian cinemas last week but my wife and I decided to only see this one on Saturday due to various reasons. It was a South Korean movie that I was intrigued to find out, while my wife was interested after seeing the cast list. OK, so here's more on the film.

Brief Story Line

Story was set through the years of 2000 to 2001 about a group of Rescue Unit of a fire station in Seoul. They consisted of Commander Kang (Yoo Jae-myung - Harbin, The Sound of Magic TV series etc), Captain Jeong (Kwak Do-won - The Golden Holiday, Never Give Up TV series etc), team members that included the kind hearted Yong-tae (Kim Min-jae - The Roundup: Punishment, The Fiery Priest TV series etc), Song Ki-cheol (Lee Joon-hyuk - The Roundup: No Way Out, Vigilante TV series etc) who was dubbed as poster boy due to his good looks, Hyo-jong (Oh Dae-hwan - I, The Executioner, The Tale of Lady Ok TV series etc), rookie Choi Cheol-woong (Joo Won - Carter, My Sassy Girl TV series etc) and several others.

During those times, the team worked on various cases from small domestic problem to building on fire. Cheol-woong was always wary of Captain Jeong's aggressiveness during rescue operation even if he got the highest number of rescue. Their biggest test however, came when a large fire occurred in a building during the night with several people caught inside.

So what would happen to the firefighters? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

OK to be honest, when I read the brief synopsis from the cinemas website, I was under the impression that it would be a full "action" movie about firefighters doing various rescue missions (the Hollywood blockbuster hit Backdraft came to mind). Even after I read the brief highlight during the opening credit where it stated the movie was based on actual events, I still thought it would be filled with those fire fighting scenes. Turned out though this movie was focusing more on the lives of the firemen and the terrible working conditions they experienced during that time and culminated to the large fire. Hence the film felt more like a drama with some intensity rather than a full intense action one. 

Anyway, this movie was interesting from casual audience point of view with the interaction of the team nicely built and the relationship among them was solid. It has a pretty large cast but the main characters I believed would be the rookie and the Captain with their contradictive views of how proper rescues should be done. The cast in general were pretty decent in their portrayals and aside from those names I mentioned above, there were also support characters like paramedic Seo Hee (Lee Yoo-young - Perhaps Love, The Lies Within TV series etc), Capt. Jeong's wife (Jang Young-nam - Project Wolf Hunting, The Tyrant TV series etc) and few others. I said that my wife was interested on the movie due to its cast whom she was familiar with, and amazingly she already guessed that there would be a lot of drama based on their past performances.

The film itself was written and directed by Kwak Kyung-taek known for directing acclaimed movies like Friend, The Classified File and several others. It has a duration of 1 hour 46 minutes which included closing credits without any post end credit scene. There was however some scenes showing the actual events of the big fire in 2001 (referred to as Hongje-dong incident) in the end, accompanied by a mellow nice song titled "Hero" sung by Park Hyo-sin. Like any other movies based on true story, it opened our eyes of how difficult the lives of fire fighters then which was improved vastly after that. I think the message and appreciation to the fire rescue team by the movie makers was successfully delivered as proven by its box office performance & making into the South Korean Top 10 in 2024. 

As a movie with plenty of dramatic moments, this one was quite spot on, providing the desired effects to audience in appreciating the hard work of those fire fighters. There were also some touching moments especially towards the end that affected my wife and I and the people who saw this movie together with us (unfortunately not that many. I guess it did not get too much hype here). Overall this should be a valuable film that resonate with South Korean audience, especially with incident that hit close to home. For general audience like me and my wife, we like the story telling, the dramatic effects and some of the visual effects. Personally to me though, it was not exactly what I had in mind, plus the low brightness and sound quality of the studio lessen the enjoyment value. So if you are interested in seeing a story based on true event with strong drama, then you would like this one. However if you are hoping for a full action fire fighting film, then you need to manage your expectation. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars