The Tunnel

It starts a little slow, but then something happens inside the tunnel. In the beginning the movie works well, but then the rescue begins. Orders are given from people in charge, but everybody is doing the excact opposite! I mean EVERYONE!!! Its just completely destroying the movie, because its so annoying. And the "hero" is way over the top.... One scene where he ends up crawling... Oh my god! Many many people dies in the tunnel...... But who cares? The people we follow only cares for themselves... Bringing a lot of people in great danger, and deaths, because they disobey orders. Its just stupid and annoying because the story is good.

It's Norway during the Christmas season. Snowplows are clearing the road after a snow storm. A fuel truck gets stuck deep inside a long tunnel. Traffic is backed up and then the truck explodes.

This is a Norwegian disaster movie. I actually like most the part right before the fire. There is a sense of tension as the anticipation of the big explosion mounts. The issue with the fire is the smoke. It makes everything hard to see. The movie does a poor job laying out the map despite its simplicity. I just don't know where that anybody is located. It seems like a simple idea to back up slowly. At first, these guys are driving like maniacs and then they just don't try. Sadly, it's not like the audience can see much even if they do try. The first half has too much back story for these characters and the second half is not compelling enough. As such, it's a passable disaster movie.

After watching the recent, magnificent disaster movies Bølgen (2015) and Skjelvet (2018) I was expecting a lot more from this than what was given.

It is rather slow, has some poor dialogue and acting and does not attain the level of the previously mentioned disaster movies when it had the potential but too much was spent on character interaction and not enough on thrills and spills which is essential for a disaster movie!

I live in Latin America, where improvisation is an art, but not even down here people would act so stupidly and cowardly. Nobody obeyed anybody... and that includes the authorities! So, this would not happen in one of the most organized countries in the world. No way José!

In any incident it is critical that there be a clearly established chain of command and that that chain be respected and followed. This movie glorifies the opposite - a bunch on individual first responders who act like cowboys, free-lancing and disregarding orders and protocols. As an occasional first responder myself, the more I watched it the angrier I got. The type of individual actions glorified in this film would, in any well-run emergency unit, result in immediate suspension if not termination - or at least I hope they would.