Directed by: Brad Peyton.
Written by: Carlton Cuse and Andre Fabrizio & Jeremy Passmore.
Starring: Dwayne Johnson (Ray), Carla Gugino (Emma), Alexandra Daddario (Blake), Ioan Gruffudd (Daniel Riddick), Archie Panjabi (Serena), Paul Giamatti (Lawrence), Hugo Johnstone-Burt (Ben), Art Parkinson (Ollie), Will Yun Lee (Dr. Kim Park), Kylie Minogue (Susan Riddick).
No one
walking into San Andreas is expecting great art. It is, after all, yet another
film about a natural disaster – that follows the formula set out by Irwin Allen
films of the 1970s (like The Towering Inferno in 1974 – that was inexplicably an
Oscar nominee for Best Picture in one of the best years for American film in
history) and brought back by Roland Emmerich in recent years (like in The Day
After Tomorrow or 2012). These films are an admitted guilty pleasure for me,
and normally I enjoy films like this. And there are a few nice touches in San
Andreas that I liked. However, in an era when pretty much every blockbuster
destroys entire cities, and bloodlessly kills off would probably be thousands
or even millions of people, a movie like San Andreas feels even more warmed
over that most films in this genre.
The
movie is about a series of massive earthquakes that hit the San Andreas fault
line in California, devastating the entire state. The movie mainly focuses on
search and rescue helicopter pilot Ray (Dwayne Johnson), who essentially
abandons his job to save his ex-wife (Carla Gugino), and then the two of them
go searching for their teenage daughter (Alexandra Daddario), who is stuck in
San Francisco with a pair of British brothers – a love interest for her, of
course, and an adorable younger boy. Between these scenes, we flash to Paul
Giamatti, as a Cal Tech scientist, who can now predict earthquakes. There are
also scenes of Gugino's new boyfriend (Ioan Gruffudd), who is essentially
playing the Richard Chamberlin role from The Towering Inferno, but instead of
being sleazy and fun, he’s just a boring asshole.
The
reason most people will go see the movie is to see massive devastation done
with state of the art special effects – and to be fair, those scenes are pretty
impressive, even if it’s the type of thing we seemingly see at the movies every
week. But if that’s all you want to see, than the film pretty much delivers
what you want. I also appreciated how there is at least a few scenes that reminded
me of Spielberg's War of the Worlds – which painted a fairly dark portrait of
humanity in times of crisis. Most of this is undone however by the closing
scenes, which are laughably patriotic.
I just
wish though that the movie gave us something to care about in terms of
characters. Unlike, say, last year’s Godzilla – which was about the
powerlessness of humanity in the face of environmental disasters – this one
paints the opposite picture. If you’re a superman like The Rock, then you can
survive. What’s disappointing about The Rock in the movie is he seems to be
taking the whole thing seriously. He’s at his best when he allows his goofy
charm to shine through. Here, he’s basically monotone from beginning to end.
The talented Gugino fares even worse, as the movie gives her nothing to do.
Surprisingly, Daddario fares better than either of them as Blake – who at least
has some interesting notes to play. Giamatti is the best of the lot – he knows
most of what he says is simply there for exposition purposes, and decides to
have some fun with it as he cashes his paycheck.
San Andreas is hardly a bad movie. It’s the type of forgettable summer movie that kills a couple of hours, and then is forgotten. It has zero ambition beyond that. I wish it did – at least a little bit. As it stands, I would recommend staying at home and watching your favorite environmental disaster movie – its undoubtedly going to better than this.
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