by Jon Partridge
How do you know when the summer season is really here? When Mother Nature decides to lay the smack down on the human race in a fashion that leaves you unable to count the cost, both financially and in number of human lives. Well rejoice because summer is truly here! No longer do Californians need to worry about a slow agonizing death from dehydration, an earthquake’s a-comin’ to finish em off real quick.
Dwayne Johnson plays Ray Gaines, a member of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Search and Rescue team. He is estranged from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) who has recently served him with divorce papers, their relationship falling apart after the death of their oldest daughter several years prior. On the day when he is due to take their remaining daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) to college he is called to work to respond to a massive earthquake in Nevada, leaving Emma’s new boyfriend Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd sporting some bizarre eyebrow sculpting) to take Blake to San Francisco himself.
While Gains is en route, a massive second quake strikes L.A. He diverts his helicopter to rescue Emma from the rooftop of a collapsing building. With the quakes spreading along the fault lines, the two head to San Francisco to rescue Blake, who has fallen into the company of two British tourists, (love interest) Ben (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) and his cheeky younger brother, Ollie (Art Parkinson). The three struggling to survive in the collapsing city while awaiting rescue.
Let’s be frank here, if you’re handing over your money for a ticket, you’re not expecting something that’s going to win the best picture Oscar or be revered as a classic slice of cinema by generations to come. You’re expecting The Rock/Dwayne Johnson, being an all action hero, glistening with sweat and delivering wisecracks while a huge amount of destruction goes down around him. In this regard San Andreas delivers.
The filmmakers took a leaf out of the Roland Emmerich playbook and delivered a dumb, predictable film, one that is a refinement of what came before, familiar characters, plots, foreshadowing and puns, polished to new levels. Perhaps most reminiscent of The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 with a few character elements from Cliffhanger thrown in for good measure. If you’re hopeful for some crazy scenario where Johnson will lift a skyscraper or punch a tsunami out of his way then you’ll be disappointed. The film gets silly but not that silly, sadly. The filmmakers employs every trick in the book to build fear and tension or raise a cheers elicit boos and the end result is undeniably entertaining.
As is standard with a film of this ilk, the all-action star is backed up by a more cerebral character, here Paul Giamatti as seismologist Dr. Lawrence Hayes supported by his research team at Cal-Tech. They have perfected a means to predict earthquakes just in time (conveniently) to witness the biggest seismological event in human history. Giamatti does his best but each time their lab pops up it’s essentially a exposition intermission where we learn how much closer to 11 the next earthquake will get.
The movie is ultimately at its strongest when it is playing off of the family dynamic. Johnson has the action hero nailed down at this point, albeit one that goes AWOL during a rescue mission abandoning hundreds to save his family. Here Johnson gets to show some impressive vulnerability, his character having lost a child several years earlier and a candid moment between him and his wife reveals depth to his range. As ever, his comedic timing is a delight, his best moment is probably while delivering a pun after skydiving into a baseball stadium. His timing is perfection and his record of making every film he’s in better continues. Gugino is always a welcome presence in films and while great her character serves as more of a foil for Johnson than anything else which is a shame. Daddario completes the family and gives a very genuine contribution. All of the main cast throw themselves into the physical elements as well as the emotional which is essential in this sort of endeavor. Even the two Brits thrown into the mix are not as annoying as you initially fear them to be, both showing nice chemistry with Daddario.
Now the polite business of the “characters and plot” is out of the way, on to the main attraction, the massive wanton destruction of several major cities. The action is pretty non stop and paced well. Superior CGI work on show and the sequences are well crafted so imbue the film with a genuine sense of scale. There really is a colossal amount of destruction and death, but the film flies by and is so invested in its core cast it’s hard to feel too little sympathy for the poor sap squished by a flying cargo container or the half a skyscraper that suddenly gets swept away. The scale of devastation and odds against our plucky cast get so ludicrous at one point I couldn’t help but start laughing. I did feel a little bad about it though as a sweet old couple got smooshed right after I did.
There are some cracks (groan), er, faults–? There are some problems in the film though, largely stemming from structure, script and the aforementioned repetition. Carlton Cuse has come a long way from the more complex writing he did previously on LOST and Bate’s Motel… and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The dialogue is one of the more predictable aspects of the film and I suggest that if anyone wanted to play a drinking game where they would take a shot every time they predicted the next line or pun they would go down quicker than one of the skyscrapers in the film.
The obvious issue with such predictability is a diffusion of tension. While many in the audience were audibly engaged with the film, personally it was obvious who was going to die and how things were going to escalate. Frankly the only surprising thing to me was a brief appearance from Antipodean pop princess Kylie Minogue. The script doesn’t really bring new or smaller scale threats into the film either the way other disaster films often do, instead we just bigger earthquakes so it feels a tad repetitive. A tsunami is a welcome sight for the viewer to shake things up, though not for the characters on screen obviously. I would like to applaud the film for not laying on the American patriotism as heavily as B-movies past but it can’t help itself and gives in at the last possible minute. You just couldn’t help yourself San Andreas, could you?
While the visual work is impressive I must reiterate a gripe of mine with the substandard 3D in use these days. While the design and use was rather considered, immersion rather then novelty being the driving force, the film looked terribly dark with a odd color tint. This may have been a theater specific issue but be forewarned, a real shame as the film showcases some impressive visuals that should be showcased better.
San Andreas delivers massive destruction centered around a nicely developed emotional core thanks to the three leads. There’s no reinventing the wheel, it is a refinement of what has come before but this polished product nestles very comfortably amongst the better disaster movies of the past. Ultimately, San Andreas provides a great vehicle for Dwayne Johnson, a visual spectacle and another reason to never move to California.