San Adreas
Dustin Chase
My entire life, scientists have been warning of the destruction that will occur when the San Andreas fault-line ruptures and breaks. The irony is how long it’s taken for a film like this to become reality. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson lives for these big budget, action packed, suspense thrillers, and else would you want but him when you need rescuing. That’s part of the gag in San Andreas, as his ex-wife (Gugino) quickly runs back into his two-ton arms when Southern California begins to fall into the ocean. Like any disaster movie, earthquakes happen, tidal waves arrive, buildings fall, but what makes San Andreas different than say 2012 or Deep Impact is the reality of the situation. “It’s not a matter of how, it’s when,” Seismologist Lawrence Hayes (Giamatti) warns like a gun shot at a race track and then we are off and destructing.
Following his service in the military, Captain Ray Gaines (Johnson) is one of Los Angeles leading Air & Land rescue officers. While on his way to assist in the destruction of The Hoover Dam, following a massive earthquake, a call from his ex-wife Emma (Gugino) has his chopper headed back to the city. Upon arrival his witnesses, from the air, the catastrophic quake that turns Los Angeles into a toppling domino field of high rises. His next call from daughter Blake (Daddario), trapped downtown San Francisco in a parking garage, has both parents making their way into the epicenter of the destruction. The experts warn the first quakes are only the beginning, when the big one hits it will create a tsunami finishing off everything west of the San Andreas fault line
The catastrophe we didn’t pay for however comes with the dialogue and the script
San Andreas shoots itself in the foot in the opening sequence, not only with some of the worst special effects in the film (as a car plummets off a cliff), but an unnecessarily chaotic chopper rescue. “Tip the hat”, really, the rescue team would endanger themselves and their unit just to make it easier to rescue the girl hanging on a cliff? It’s in that moment you mentally prepare yourself for the onslaught of unrealistic and unbelievable rescue scenes to come. Director Brad Payton (Ted) turns this disaster flick into a guilty pleasure with epic action sequences and mostly impressive special effects. The catastrophe we didn’t pay for however comes with the dialogue and the script. Emma and Ray reminiscing about the past while thousands of people perish below is not good character development.
The film is at its strongest and most enjoyable when Johnson and Gugino aren’t speaking. Giamatti’s character exists only to heighten the suspense with dire warnings and forecasts from a scientific point of view. Unfortunately, as the one real actor in the epic, he spends most of his time underneath a table in the Caltech media lab. Typically I like silence to soak up what I am seeing on screen, but I recommend watching this with someone you can share the “yea right”, and “of course” moments with. San Andreas is an experience in IMAX but watching it on anything smaller will just reveal how intimately small the focus of all the destruction is. We only follow one family, Ray is using all those resources just to save his wife and daughter, while everyone else must depend on other personnel, maybe that’s just the writers playing up on selfish stereotypes of Californians.
Final Thought
With little brains and selfish intentions, at least the special effects are thrilling.