3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, constant mayhem and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.29.15
I had my doubts, but director
Brad Peyton pulled it off: San Andreas deserves to become summer’s second
surprise movie hit (following the utterly delightful Pitch Perfect 2).
Peyton had help, starting with a
reasonably intelligent script from Carlton Cuse, Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy
Passmore — which, thankfully, eschews sudsy melodrama — along with a solid cast
toplined by Dwayne Johnson.
Absolutely the guy I’d want by my
side, during any sort of crisis.
But this isn’t a one-man show.
Peyton draws equally persuasive performances from co-stars Paul Giamatti, Carla
Gugino and Alexandra Daddario, and (slightly) lesser players Hugo
Johnstone-Burt and Art Parkinson comport themselves equally well.
More crucially, Peyton is to be
congratulated for successfully walking the razor’s-edge fine line of tone: a
very difficult task in this particular genre.
The original Airport and Poseidon
Adventure may have played their crisis-laden dramas straight, when they
kick-started the whole “disasterpiece” franchise four decades ago, but things
had turned eye-rollingly silly by the time Rollercoaster, The Swarm and When Time Ran Out came along. Fred MacMurray and Olivia de Havilland fleeing
killer bees? Puh-leaze. Rarely have so many former A-list stars been subjected
to so much puerile nonsense.
But the genre’s more recent
revival, with a greater reliance on computer-generated calamity, offered an
entirely different set of pitfalls. With soulless filmmakers eager to showcase
all the catastrophe that money could throw onto a screen, the human element
became second to gleefully orchestrated death and destruction ... much as
slasher films earned their rep not for how plucky heroes survived, but instead
for the way helpless victims got snuffed.
This tasteless sensibility
reached its nadir a few years ago with director Roland Emmerich’s 2012, which
played the end of the world as a spectator sport that invited giggles, as
viewers watched untold millions perish in (sometimes) deliberately amusing
ways. Truly reprehensible.
Peyton & Co. wisely avoided
that blunder. While the earthquake-generated events here are undeniably grim —
and rather close to home for those of us living in California, particularly in
the wake of the recent tragedy in Nepal — cinematographer Steve Yedlin never
lingers on the untold loss of life, nor does the film pander to baser
instincts. Peyton and his writers simply concentrate on telling a saga of
crisis, and the resourceful individuals who overcome one setback after another.
Besides which, you’ve gotta love
a story that treats engineers with such respect, and makes champions of humble
Caltech undergraduates. Not to mention getting not just one, but two
impressively capable female characters in the bargain.
And hey ... if the heroics
eventually become improbable, that’s the nature of the game. This film earns
plenty of good will before unleashing its physics-defying stunts. So yes ...
we’re treated to the world’s most resilient helicopter, quickly followed by the
world’s sturdiest truck, and — without question — the world’s most amazing
speedboat.
Go with it.
Following a prologue that
introduces gung-ho Los Angeles Fire Department search-and-rescue helicopter
pilot Ray Gaines (Johnson), things settle long enough to introduce our other
players. Poor Ray has just been served with divorce papers by his
soon-to-be-ex-wife Emma (Gugino), who has moved in with über-wealthy architect
boyfriend Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd).
The latter comes as a painful
surprise to Ray, particularly when Riddick offers to escort Ray and Emma’s
daughter Blake (Daddario) to college ... a potential father/daughter bonding
trip that Ray hoped to take himself, until work interferes.
Truth is, Ray and Emma haven’t
really fallen out of love; they’ve simply been driven apart by an earlier
tragedy that claimed the life of their second child, Blake’s younger sister.
Elsewhere, Caltech seismologist
Lawrence Hayes (Giamatti) and his colleague Kim Park (Will Yun Lee) believe
they’ve found a way to anticipate and track earthquakes, thus granting people a
valuable early warning opportunity to flee a given area. Sadly, their next
successful test — having discovered a previously undetected fault near Nevada’s
Hoover Dam — proves mere warm-up for what is to follow.
Blake, meanwhile, has arrived in
San Francisco, where she meets flirtatiously cute with Ben (Johnstone-Burt), a
young British engineer hoping to get a job working for Riddick. The somewhat
shy Ben has turned this interview trip into a sight-seeing vacation with his
precocious younger brother Ollie (Parkinson), who is armed with a thoroughly
footnoted and earmarked travel guide to San Francisco.
Somehow, we just know that little
book will come in handy...
Actually, all sorts of things
come in handy as the situation goes from bad to worse. It’s refreshing to cheer
characters who survive not merely because of their pluck, but also their
intelligence. Most crucially, each flash of inspiration seems perfectly
reasonable for a young engineer, or a veteran fireman’s daughter, or a gaggle
of Caltech whiz kids.
Johnson continues his march
toward becoming a well-rounded action hero: a guy believably heroic not merely
because of his tree-trunk arms, but also thanks to the air of calm certainty
that he projects. It has been fascinating to watch Johnson’s career arc,
starting when he was little more than a muscle-bound wrestling veteran who
retained his billing as The Rock in early films such as The Scorpion King and The Rundown.
Johnson’s modest beginnings
paralleled those of Arnold Schwarzenegger two decades earlier, in equally
blood-and-thunder flicks such as Conan the Barbarian and Commando. But
whereas Schwarzenegger’s acting range never improved — forever extending from A
to B — Johnson has grown into a more versatile talent.
Plus, Johnson can hurl a quip far
better than Schwarzenegger on his best day.
I’ve long enjoyed Gugino, ever
since her days supporting Michael J. Fox on television’s Spin City, and
particularly when she kicked serious butt as Elmore Leonard’s ferociously
determined U.S. marshal in the lamentably short-lived TV series Karen Sisco. Gugino radiates smart, tough and sultry, and she gets ample opportunity to
display all three here.
She also gets the film’s most
satisfyingly funny line, and you’ll know it when you hear it.
Giamatti displays the warmth, wisdom
and quiet sincerity that we’d want from such a professional, at such a moment.
Indeed, it’s almost a revelation, in this cynical era that seem to prize
ignorance: a scientist as a modest, full-blown hero. What a concept!
Although at times seemingly
placed before the camera to display her ample cleavage, Daddario compensates by
making Blake a refreshingly gutsy young woman: far from a helpless damsel in
distress.
Johnstone-Burt, immediately
recognized as Constable Hugh Collins by viewers lucky enough to have caught the
charming Australian TV series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, makes Ben an
engagingly bashful yin to Blake’s take-control yang. Not that Ben is a helpless
twit; he delivers when required, with Johnstone-Burt serving well as the
surrogate young-engineer-to-the-rescue for the academic nerds in this film’s
audience.
Gruffudd needs to be careful,
lest he be permanently typecast as a despicable, condescending horse’s ass. I
thought his smarmy jerk in 2011’s unsavory Sanctum represented the worst
mankind had to offer, but his role here gives serious competition.
Parkinson is appropriately cute,
granting a bit of depth to his role as a pesky-little-brother stereotype, and
Archie Panjabi fares well as a TV journalist who happens to interview
Giamatti’s Dr. Hayes at just the right moment.
Production designer Barry Chusid
and visual effects supervisor Randall Starr do simply amazing things; the
on-camera calamity is frighteningly realistic, even scary. Peyton and editor
Bob Ducsay also pace events wisely, building to ever-more-horrific natural disasters.
That said, this film gains
nothing from its 3D effects, which are mostly wasted.
Engaging as the narrative is,
it’s by no means perfect. I can’t approve of a veteran search-and-rescue
fireman who deserts his Los Angeles associates — and countless endangered
Southern Californians — to hare off on a personal mission to rescue his
daughter. It’s also odd when the prologue introduces several of Ray’s “longtime
colleagues, all loyal to each other” — most notably Todd Williams’ Marcus — and
then abandons them, never to be seen again.
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