![]() And where there’s a tight father-daughter bond, a mother is somewhere in the mix, in this case, Emma, who has served final divorce papers on Ray as she is getting ready to move in with her millionaire building-developer boyfriend, Daniel. He is also a loving father as we hear through phone conversations with his college bound daughter Blake. From flying 600 helicopter rescue missions in Afghanistan to LAFD search-and-rescue, he is THE man you want in a crisis, and we see that from the start as he and his team rescue a young woman who has gone over the edge of one of those San Fernando Valley “dead man’s curves” in her car landing on the side of a ravine cliff face. Where they shine, however, is with some key warning infused-dialogue about earthquake preparedness. Have the filmmakers of SAN ANDREAS never personally experienced a devastating earthquake such as those in Loma Prieta, Landers, Northridge, Whittier Narrows – and that’s just in California alone! Presenting as a CGI toy store replacement for FAO Schwartz, SAN ANDREAS director Brad Peyton and company completely miss the boat with emotional gravitas and resonant authenticity of story, circumstance and performance, save for the shining light of a young Art Parkinson, the sage seismic science and heart of Paul Giamatti, and an exchange or two between co-stars Carla Gugino and Dwayne Johnson. (Joining that can be everything related to the concurrent VOD release of “San Andreas Quake” which is almost a mirror film of SAN ANDREAS but with a mother seismologist predicting quakes and saving her stepchild and a father helicopter pilot.) ![]() There’s a nice shot of a rooftop pool starting to froth up like a Jacuzzi as the building beneath shivers.While I never wish ill on anyone or anything (except perhaps an annoying sibling or two), if “the big one” hits California and the San Andreas earthquake fault splits wide open, I won’t shed any tears if every print, Blu-ray, DVD, digital coding and anything else that could ever replicate SAN ANDREAS the movie, falls into the abyss. The movie is premised on the idea that it all could happen, and yet its enjoyment is naturally premised on the unconscious conviction that it couldn’t happen really. Paul Giamatti plays the concerned earthquake scientist who is on the ball, although the film is notably without the traditional bad-guy politician or authority figure who has refused to heed warnings. ![]() This is Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd), whose pampered private jet, of course, looks very different to the manly dependability and courage of Ray’s ’copter. Beefy Dwayne Johnson plays Ray, a helicopter rescue pilot who has to save his super-hot twentysomething daughter when she’s stranded in the horrific quake chaos – and winds up joining forces on the job with his ex-wife Emma (Carla Gugino), who naturally realises the guy she’s with now is just a wealthy asshole. There’s no need for more than one star and CGI does the real work. It brought back happy memories of 1974’s Earthquake, with Charlton Heston – in cinema-shaking Sensurround! (Nowadays it’s the thrumming bass notes in that state-of-the-art Dolby sound system that buzz you in your seat.) Back in the glory days of 1970s disaster films, an all-star cast would supply a solemn sense of epic and a continuous firework display of cameo recognition. H ere is a fantastically silly spectacular about San Francisco collapsing into the juddering and shuddering San Andreas fault.
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