San Andreas

Rating : 6/10
Release Date : 29th May, 2015
Time : 114 minutes
Director : Brad Peyton; Writer : Andre Fabrizio, Jeremy Passmore; Music : Andrew Lockington
Starring : Dwayne Johnson, Alexandra Daddario, Carla Gugino, Paul Giamatti, Archie Panjabi, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Art Parkinson, Ioan Gruffudd



Watch it for an adrenalin rush, super special effects, the reassuring presence of Dwayne Johnson and the lovely persona of Alexandra (of Percy Jackson fame).

Don’t watch it if you like your films to be totally logical, things to make sense, be neatly tied up and you don’t like the main characters becoming almost super-heroes.

Right from opening sequence its clear that your heart is going to get a good workout and that Dwayne is going to be Captain Splendid. He captains a rescue chopper in LA. And when the chips are down he is the man you want on your side. Though his soon-to-be ex-wife, Carla, doesn’t think so as she is about to move in with her Richie Rich boyfriend, Ioan, having tried to make their relationship work after the an unfortunate accident but finally giving up. Alexandra, their daughter, is very attached to both parents, a bit of a Daddy’s Girl but cant say no when Ioan offers to drop her to Frisco when Dwayne is suddenly called away on an emergency…a seismic event at the Hoover Dam, where there are no known fault lines…and where Paul Giamatti, a seismology expert, is trying to verify his theory about earthquake prediction…

And that’s just the beginning…

It was nice to see Archie Panjabi in a prominent role, as a TV reporter – had liked her in A Good Year too. Carla is good, as always, and Hugo and Art are very good as brothers who befriend Alexandra while she is in San Francisco. Paul’s role is surprisingly miniscule. The dialogue is nothing to write home about – full of ‘Hurry Up’ or ‘Are You Ok?’ or a slight variant of that ‘Are You Hurt?’…but the true beauty of the film lies in its glorious life-like effects – whether it’s the buildings collapsing or waters flooding or the helicopter action sequences…and the most spectacular one for me was the fault line in the middle of the road…incredibly real and equally scary…

I like the way most American movies showcasing mega-cataclysmic events manage to make it about certain individuals and families – the rest of the the people. This is one of them. It also tries to sanitize disaster – you don’t see the really ugly side. And nothing bad happens to good folk, nothing really bad anyways…