‘Emergency Declaration’ Review: Song Kang-ho Stars In An Entertainingly Ridiculous Airplane Disaster Thriller

With a premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, an epic 140-minute runtime, and a starry South Korean cast that includes Kim Nam-gil (“Memoir of a Murderer”), Lee Byung-hun (“I Saw the Devil”), and Song Kang-ho (“Parasite”), Han Jae-rim’s feature “Emergency Declaration” would appear, on the surface, as a prestige-play. 

After all, the film concerns a viral outbreak on an airplane and a race to find a vaccine that, despite being written pre-pandemic, could have obvious parallels to COVID-19. In actuality, though, the film is much less serious. If they were to remake “Emergency Declaration” in English — which they very much shouldn’t do — it would definitely star a beleaguered Liam Neeson if he hadn’t essentially made this movie already with “Non-Stop.” Spinning out in so many directions at once, the plot is both nonsensical and superfluous, as the film basically amounts to a series of over-the-top setpieces that toggle between the panic that ensues on the plane and the frantic search for a vaccine that happens on the ground. 

READ MORE: ‘Emergency Declaration’ Trailer: Han-Jae-Rim’s Plane Thriller Starring’ Parasite’ Star Song-Kang-Ho

But, mainly it follows In-ho (Song), a weary cop who begins investigating a murder before realizing that the crime is connected to a biotech company. A former employee of that company, Jin-seok (Siwan) has stolen a virus that he plans to release on a flight from Seoul to Honolulu. On that plane is, of course, In-ho’s wife, as well as Jae-hyeok (Lee), a former pilot whose fear of flying is linked to a tragic backstory that saw him save an entire flight but accidentally kill a flight attendant that, not surprisingly, was the wife of the current flight’s pilot. It’s all incredibly convoluted, and that’s even before we get to the passengers creating factions and a crisis task force led by Transport Minister Sook-hee (Jeon Do-yeon).  

Of course, Jae-hyeok is going to have to confront his fear of flying, In-ho is going to save his wife, and the nefarious deeds of the company are going to be unmasked. Throw in a few military jets, the United States refusing to help out a foreign government (that part actually seems realistic), a panicked public protesting the plane landing anywhere, and enough lens flares to rival all of J.J. Abrams filmography combined and you have a movie that is so gloriously ridiculous that the standard metrics of criticism don’t apply. 

Instead, the joy of watching “Emergency Declaration” is mainly linked to wondering what insane twist will come next. Fighter jets trying to shoot the plane out of the sky? Check. Multiple times the entire crew and cabin are suspended in Zero-G as the plane hurdles toward the ground? Yep. A scene where someone injects himself with the virus for absolutely no reason at all? You bet.

Throw in an oppressively melodramatic score by Lee Byeong-woo and enough tragic backstories to fill out a few weeks of a soap opera, and you have a movie that would very nicely fit on a double-bill with “Passenger 57,” “Executive Decision,” “Flightplan” or any number of airplane disaster movies that used be mainstays of Sunday afternoon TNT. 

Is “Emergency Declaration” good? Not really. It’s self-serious, overly sentimental, convoluted, and runs close to an ungodly two and a half hours. Despite paralleling our current pandemic, the connections between the film and COVID begin and end with multiple government workers yelling “virus” and “anti-virus” at each other at various intervals. Precisely no one is going to accuse “Emergency Declaration” of being high art. But, even with these problems, it nevertheless is one hell of a ride. [C+]