San Andreas

San Andreas is the latest disaster movie to hit the theaters. It’s available as a 3D experience, as well as the regular 2D. There is some good use of 3D, which is how I saw it. It’s almost enough to recommend seeing it in 3D, but you won’t be missing too much if you don’t see it that way. This film is a traditional disaster film, reminiscent of several others.

Dwayne Johnson plays Ray, a helicopter rescue pilot working out of L.A. The film starts with a TV news crew interviewing him and his team as they rescue someone who’s crashed their car in the hilly L.A. suburbs. He’s going to go camping with his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario), before she goes off to college in San Francisco, but is called away, because other matters get out of hand.

In a separate storyline, two seismologists from Caltech, Doctors Hayes and Park (Paul Giamatti and Will Yun Lee) have developed a predictive model of earthquakes, and go to the source of their latest prediction, near Las Vegas. Their calculations are accurate, and all hell breaks loose. They are caught up in a colossal quake along a previously undiscovered fault line near the Hoover Dam. After returning to Caltech, Dr. Hayes’s model shows that the actual San Andreas fault is about to give way, from L.A. up to San Francisco.

We find that Ray is about to get divorced from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino), and she’s moving in with her new boyfriend, a real estate devloper who’s building will be the tallest in San Fran. He offers to take Blake to SF since Ray is no longer able.

Then, the big one hits L.A., and Ray, who was on his way to Vegas in his chopper to help with rescue attempts there, turns around to rescue Emma, who’s downtown. Meanwhile, Blake is trapped up in San Francisco, and Ray decides to fly up to save her. There’re some spectacular bits of destruction going on. There are some scenes reminiscent of 1974’s Earthquake

From there, onward, the situation goes from bad to worse. The disaster porn really kicks into high gear. Ground shakes, buildings tumble, and so on. What we see is more on a personal level, as the movie sticks to following the characters instead of the bigger picture. Perhaps personal isn’t the right word, it’s more intimate. They are involved in the situation, but the focus is clearly on them in the midst of all the chaos.

I have to say that I am a huge fan of these Disaster Porn flicks. All the destruction at the hand of Nature really just amplifies how powerless we are, regardless of what we believe we are in control of. San Andreas is a good film with an OK script. The side story with the seismologists really helps the story, IMO. There are several typical disaster movie tropes in the film, but they’re not too much of a cliche. There are a few graphic deaths, the kind you’d expect in a film like this. I do recommend the film.

There is one issue that bothered me early in the film, but I will explain it below.

Spoilers follow, so you may stop reading if you do not want to be spoiled.

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Spoilers below, you were warned!

I have one major quibble about the film. Ray’s on his way to Vegas, supposedly with his crew. When he decides to go save his soon to be ex, his crew disappears. What happened to them? I’m trying to remember if they were even in the helicopter when his wife calls for help. There’s no mention of them beyond that point, and they were supposed to all be comrades from Afghanistan who stuck together, no matter what. THEN, he decides to ignore all that’s happening around him in L.A. and fly up to San Francisco. I guess his sense of duty went out the window right with the rest of his crew.

Before you reply, yes, I know it’s a movie and I’m not supposed to expect things like consistency, but still, I had to mention it. It’s a pretty big plot hole that they could’ve explained better. I hope that explanation shows up as a deleted scene when it’s available for rental/purchase/etc.

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