SAN ANDREAS (2015 - ACTION / THRILLER / DISASTER FLICK) ***1/2 out of ***** OR 7 out of 10
(Pretty strong argument for moving to the East Coast...)
CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Paula Giamatti, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Anchie Panjabi, Ioan Gruffaud, Art Parkinson, Kylie Minogue, Will Yun Lee, Alec Utgoff, Julian Shaw.
DIRECTOR: George Miller
(WARNING: Some SPOILERS and some rather compelling reasons to say the fuck out of California - straight ahead...)
IT'S LIKE THIS: In our last review for MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (review # 611), we commented on how anyone who doesn't like the desert should steer clear of that flick because, well, it's set in some really unpleasant-looking stretch of desert that will have them pining for the Arctic Circle in ten minutes flat. Well, by the same token, our next review should probably be avoided by anyone who doesn't like earthquakes. And since I don't know many people who actually get turned on by seismic tremors and cracks opening up in the ground and buildings crumbling to dust, that's pretty much most of us.
Our next review is SAN ANDREAS, and just to clarify: this movie has nothing to do with that PS3 / Xbox One video game GRAND THEFT AUTO that apparently has a circuit that is called San Andreas. Evidently, a significant portion of younger folks thought this movie was a racing flick based on that game. Yes, folks: the automatic assumption of most teens / twentysomethings when you say "San Andreas" is that you are talking about a video game - not the giant-ass crack running straight up the middle of the state of California that has caused every recorded earthquake in the state since the practice of recording earthquakes started. And most of them probably live IN the state of California. Scary, isn't it? And I thought my generation was dense.
SAN ANDREAS, in case you hadn't figured out by now, is indeed about the great, big, giant-ass crack bisecting California - and what happens when "The Big One" finally hits the Golden State. Basically, this is a 70's disaster movie given a 2015 makeover. You've seen the formula before with THE TOWERING INFERNO, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, WHEN TIME RAN OUT, THE SWARM, METEOR, AIRPORT, AVALANCHE!, BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, and, er, EARTHQUAKE.
In case you need reminding, here's the formula: (1) pick a crowded location: the more potential for a high body count, the better; (2) introduce a dozen or so characters and get the audience familiar enough with them to care about who croaks and who makes it; (3) add a catastrophic disaster, natural or man-made; (4) place all ingredients in a blender and blend at high speed; then (5) watch and see which of those fuckers float to the surface.
In SAN ANDREAS, those "fuckers" are: (1) Ray Gaines (Dwayne Johnson), LA search-and-rescue chopper pilot who is dedicated to his job and will let nothing get in the way of it - unless his family is in danger, then fuck those strangers needing rescuing; (2) Emma Gaines (Carla Gugino), Ray's soon-to-be-divorced-from-him wife who isn't sure if she's doing the right thing by leaving Ray; (3) Blake Gaines (Alexandra Daddario), Ray and Emma's teenage daughter who is visiting San Francisco when "The Big One" hits; (4) Dr. Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti), seismologist who sees signs that California will be fucked royally very soon without any lube; (5) Dr. Kim Park (Will Yun Lee), Dr. Hayes' research partner who thinks their work can help predict earthquakes; (6) Serena Johnson (Archie Panjabi), hot British reporter who clearly loves nerds by the way she makes googley eyes at Dr. Hayes; (7) Ben Taylor (Hugo Johnstone-Burt), hot British architect who is in Frisco for a job interview when "The Big One" hits; (8) Ollie Taylor (Art Parkinson), Ben's kid brother who tags along to Frisco for a quasi-vacation with his big bro but now probably wishes he stayed behind in London; (9) Daniel Reddick (Ioan Gruffaud), San Francisco millionaire / prick who is Emma's new squeeze and Blake's potential new stepfather; (10) Susan Riddick (Kylie Minogue), Daniel's equally-loathsome sister who looks just like that Australian chick who sang "Locomotion"; (11) Alexi (Alec Utgoff), Russian grad student on Dr. Hayes' research team; and (12) Stoner (Julian Shaw), Australian grad student on Dr. Hayes' team who looks exactly like a, well, you know.
Anyhow, there are millions of other Californians who are endangered when the ground starts a-shakin' and a-rollin' but the above 12 are the main focus of SAN ANDREAS. Who among them will die and die horribly? Who among them will live to tell the tale? Will Ray and Emma patch things up? Will they manage to reach Blake in time? Will Dr. Hayes and Dr. Park figure out how to "read" the tremors? Will Serena write the story of a lifetime and knock boots with Dr. Hayes? Will Ben and Ollie ever see the shores of England again? How will all this end?
Three words: STOP! DROP! COVER!
BUT SERIOUSLY: I have to confess to having a weakness for 1970's Disaster Movies like THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and THE TOWERING INFERNO. In the mid-2000's there was an attempt to begin remaking these classics. Unfortunately, the first experiment was a box-office disappointment. This was POSEIDON (2006), a remake of the 1972 film that is widely considered to be the Grand-Daddy of the Modern Disaster Film.
Unlike THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, though, the finished product for POSEIDON was reportedly cut down from its original 122-minute running time to a scant 98 minutes. A lot of the scenes that hit the cutting room floor were supposedly ones that built up the characters and their relationships with one another.
Consequently, POSEIDON suffered because we weren't too concerned about the imperiled cast because we barely knew them before the disaster hit. In THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, we spent over a half-hour with the characters, getting to know them, before the tidal wave hit. In POSEIDON, it's a mere 13 minutes before disaster strikes. Given there were about 13 principle characters in POSEIDON, that was barely enough time to get any kind of a bead on them. As a result, the film underperformed at the box-office and all plans to start remaking other 70's disaster classics starting with THE TOWERING INFERNO were scrapped. Which makes the appearance of a film like SAN ANDREAS this summer a nice surprise - and a welcome attempt to revive the sub-genre.
SAN ANDREAS thankfully follows the track of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE instead of POSEIDON's. That is, it takes its time fleshing out the main characters and their relationships to one another. It helps considerably that they are not presented as "superheroes" but just as ordinary people like you or me. Even Dwayne Johnson's skillfull and brave chopper pilot hero is presented in a matter-of-fact, down-to-Earth way. The cumulative effect of sufficient time spent with these people as well as presenting them as no different from you or me, is that we actually are concerned for their survival.
Character identification and sympathy is needed for a film like SAN ANDREAS that constantly tests credibility. If we didn't care about the people caught in the disaster, we wouldn't suspend our disbelief and allow ourselves to be engaged in the action. The reason POSEIDON fared weakly was because, with only a few exceptions, none of the imperiled cruise ship passengers were worth caring for. Largely because we were barely introduced to them before the cruise ship was flipped over by the tidal wave.
By contrast, by the time the first earthquake goes off in SAN ANDREAS at around the 35 minute mark, we have strong impressions of almost all of the principle players. By then, we are walking in their shoes and feel the danger that they experience. Credit must also go to the actors and actresses themselves for making their roles so vivid and relatable. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson may not be the most versatile or chameleon-like actor, but what he can and does do, he does well - and that is to be a tough, reliable man of action and integrity. He's even given a chance to stretch and flex his dramatic muscles here in an affecting scene where his character and Carla Gugino's character revisit a past trauma in their lives.
Speaking of Gugino, I've always found her a lovely and strong presence. She manages to make Emma Gaines a believably tough and resilient everywoman caught in the middle of a terrible situation, without turning her into a cartoony superwoman. Gugino always underscores the humanity of her characters and she does so again here, making Emma a truly likable heroine. Gugino also has nice, easy rapport with Johnson by now, having starred twice previously with him in FASTER and RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN. The only "quibble" I have about Gugino is a positive one: although she is in her mid-40s, she still looks so naturally youthful that whenever she is in a scene with twentysomething Alexandra Daddario as Emma's daughter Blake, they actually seem more like sisters than mother and daughter.
Speaking of Daddario, she has proven no stranger to action, terror, and running for her life, having starred recently in TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D. In her hands, Blake is like a younger version of Emma - tough, smart, capable, but also kind and compassionate. It helps considerably that Daddario and Gugino kind of look like each other. Daddario also has the same ease with Johnson as her father Ray. It's important that the Gaines family unit be believable and likable for us to invest in them throughout SAN ANDREAS, and Johnson, Gugino, and Daddario nail it.
The support cast is filled with strong, familiar faces like Paul Giamatti, Archie Panjabi, Will Yun-Lee, Ioan Gruffaud, Kylie Minogue, and some engaging newcomers like Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Art Parkinson, Alec Utgoff, and Julian Shaw. The standouts are Johnstone-Burt and Parkinson as the imperiled British brothers who risk their lives to help Blake and team up with her to try to get out of San Francisco alive. Like Johnson, Gugino, and Daddario, everyone else in the cast makes their particular character interesting and worth rooting for.
Ultimately, SAN ANDREAS may not be the most credible movie, taking as many liberties as it does with scientific and seismological fact. However, as the late, great film critic Roger Ebert once said about movies: "they are empathy-generating machines" that bring out our basic instinct to care. And if there's anything that SAN ANDREAS does more effectively than craft exciting (if also a bit unbelievable) action scenes, its make us care about the people in it who are fighting to stay alive.
