When I was in the second grade, my mother taught at the same school I was attending. She taught the third and fourth graders right down my hall, and in her class room was a hefty book about natural disasters - what they are, how they are caused, and when they have happened before. More than anything, though, I mostly just remember the pictures within that book. Photographs of Mount Vesuvius erupting, famed rivers overflowing, and houses taken to the ground by sink-holes that nobody knew existed. There was one photograph in that book that left a deep impression on me, however, taken during the events of the "Great San Francisco Earthquake" in 1906 (is it not funny how we human beings can take a terrible tragedy, put the word 'great' in front of it, and make it a sensational tragedy?) It showed a little girl, whom I would assume to be no more than seven years old, jumping across a crack that had formed in the ground with her arms flailing in the air and an expression of sheer terror on her face, and it was not the shifting earth, literally beneath her feet, nor the crumbling brick structures around her that left the biggest impression of my young mind, but that panicked look written across her eyes, and the fearful cry you could only imagine hearing from her mouth as the paved paths of the city she knew were ripped away before her. She went unnamed, and I have always wondered what became of her, as well as the person who took the photograph. I hope they helped each other through the tragedy.
These are the people that I thought the most of while watching Brady Peyton's "San Andreas," (2015) the latest (and perhaps largest-scale) big-budget, Hollywood disaster film since Roland Emmerich's "2012" (2009). This film, like the one previously mentioned, takes a plausible worst-case scenario and turns the intensity up to eleven...and then twelve...and then thirteen, and so on. The difference, and reason that I believe I enjoyed "San Andreas" more than Emmerich's foray into computer generated destruction, lies in the fact that Peyton's film is based on matter rather than mythology, and with that comes the classic question of, "What if this were to actually happen?" That question is a tragic thing to consider while watching hundreds of people scramble for safety from falling debris, shards of glass, smoke clouds, and even a tsunami. Yes, a tsunami. All of these events are set off by a series of earthquakes almost a century past their expected due dates from the San Andreas fault line (hence the movie's title), and to make the matters worse, there is a somewhat shocking discovery made about the geographical location of San Francisco itself by two scientists, Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti) and Dr. Kim Park (Will Yun Lee), that provides ample enough to tension to support our story as well as our main cast - which appropriately puts Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Biceps front and center for the majority of the film. I will not spoil what that discovery is, however.
Johnson plays Raymond Gaines, a LA Fire Department Air Rescue pilot in the midst of a divorce from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) for what can only be your standard movie reasonings, but mostly because summer movies require some bit of romantic drama. She is moving in with the illustriously rich real estate owner Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd, playing here with an air of sincerity yet snideness just right for the part) and taking their daughter Blake (Alexandria Daddario) with her. We go on to learn that they used to have another daughter who drowned at a young age, a death that still haunts the members of her family - particularly Raymond; given his job as a rescuer, he remembers her as the most important person he could not save. All of our characters are conveniently set into their places on opposite sides of the city right when the earthquakes begin to hit, and it is up to Gaines to shift gears into overdrive and save his family (and perhaps even his broken relationship, while he is at it) from total disaster.
One would not be incorrect to claim that this sounds like typical summer movie fare - for the most part, it really is. What surprised me about "San Andreas" is how many times it just kept the ball rolling. No matter the odds, no matter the impossibly horrendous outcomes of the current predicament our characters are discovering themselves to be in, the film always finds a way to make the situation go from bad to worse without so much as a moment's notice. I can only imagine the creators of the stunts excitedly pitching several of their ideas to a group of executive producers in a stuffy board room tucked away somewhere in Hollywood, and it is no wonder why. Despite most of the "movie magic" being handled by scarily enhanced special effects, Dwayne Johnson is in what I like to call full superstar-action-hero mode. He naturally controls almost every scene he is in with the level-headed calmness required for his role as a rescue pilot, and is backed by nothing but solid to strong supporting actors. Paul Giamatti and his crew of scientists seem to be in the movie solely to either relieve the tension or ominously foreshadow it as the story dictates, and although it feels as if all their scenes are doing is moving us away from the "things falling apart" side of the story, they do prove to be fairly entertaining and informative...in that undeniably cheesy kind of way. Another thing I enjoyed about the movie was how it sometimes surprised me with its legitimate concern for teaching safety-measures to employ in the midst of an earthquake (or disastrous situations in general). I was curious to see how much of the instruction they gave in the film was knowledgable and was pleasantly surprised to find that most of its depiction on what to do in an earthquake was in accordance with the Southern California Earthquake Center's own advertised emergency plans for this kind of problem (you can find a link to their well written page on what "San Andreas" got 'right' and 'wrong' here).
Ultimately, I had fun with "San Andreas" - a good deal more than I thought I would. Even when it slogs through obligations of half-baked character development and movie plot devices, it is summer fun on an over-exaggerated scale, just the way I like it. No part of the movie gave me this feeling more than at around the half way mark. Raymond and his wife are driving across the California countryside when their progress is abruptly halted by a monstrous split in the earth. They hop out of their stolen truck and walk to the edge of the pavement. "What is this?" she asks.
Johnson stares, almost directly, into the camera.
"The San Andreas fault."
- Jared Mullis
Johnson plays Raymond Gaines, a LA Fire Department Air Rescue pilot in the midst of a divorce from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) for what can only be your standard movie reasonings, but mostly because summer movies require some bit of romantic drama. She is moving in with the illustriously rich real estate owner Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd, playing here with an air of sincerity yet snideness just right for the part) and taking their daughter Blake (Alexandria Daddario) with her. We go on to learn that they used to have another daughter who drowned at a young age, a death that still haunts the members of her family - particularly Raymond; given his job as a rescuer, he remembers her as the most important person he could not save. All of our characters are conveniently set into their places on opposite sides of the city right when the earthquakes begin to hit, and it is up to Gaines to shift gears into overdrive and save his family (and perhaps even his broken relationship, while he is at it) from total disaster.
One would not be incorrect to claim that this sounds like typical summer movie fare - for the most part, it really is. What surprised me about "San Andreas" is how many times it just kept the ball rolling. No matter the odds, no matter the impossibly horrendous outcomes of the current predicament our characters are discovering themselves to be in, the film always finds a way to make the situation go from bad to worse without so much as a moment's notice. I can only imagine the creators of the stunts excitedly pitching several of their ideas to a group of executive producers in a stuffy board room tucked away somewhere in Hollywood, and it is no wonder why. Despite most of the "movie magic" being handled by scarily enhanced special effects, Dwayne Johnson is in what I like to call full superstar-action-hero mode. He naturally controls almost every scene he is in with the level-headed calmness required for his role as a rescue pilot, and is backed by nothing but solid to strong supporting actors. Paul Giamatti and his crew of scientists seem to be in the movie solely to either relieve the tension or ominously foreshadow it as the story dictates, and although it feels as if all their scenes are doing is moving us away from the "things falling apart" side of the story, they do prove to be fairly entertaining and informative...in that undeniably cheesy kind of way. Another thing I enjoyed about the movie was how it sometimes surprised me with its legitimate concern for teaching safety-measures to employ in the midst of an earthquake (or disastrous situations in general). I was curious to see how much of the instruction they gave in the film was knowledgable and was pleasantly surprised to find that most of its depiction on what to do in an earthquake was in accordance with the Southern California Earthquake Center's own advertised emergency plans for this kind of problem (you can find a link to their well written page on what "San Andreas" got 'right' and 'wrong' here).
Ultimately, I had fun with "San Andreas" - a good deal more than I thought I would. Even when it slogs through obligations of half-baked character development and movie plot devices, it is summer fun on an over-exaggerated scale, just the way I like it. No part of the movie gave me this feeling more than at around the half way mark. Raymond and his wife are driving across the California countryside when their progress is abruptly halted by a monstrous split in the earth. They hop out of their stolen truck and walk to the edge of the pavement. "What is this?" she asks.
Johnson stares, almost directly, into the camera.
"The San Andreas fault."
- Jared Mullis
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