The Case for Faulty Lines

I was surprised how empty the cinema was for the second week of the release of San Andreas, the latest Rock-starring disaster flick all to do with earthquakes and heroes and Californians perishing to fiery deaths.

And then I saw the movie.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is as charismatic and charming and big as ever (though the fact he didn’t wear a skin tight UnderArmour t-shirt was a little surprising) and he is the main man, an ex soldier “retired” to a life for Fire Service rescue helicopter operating.  He is estranged from his wife, the kind of estrangement that only some super heroics during a natural cataclysm can resolve, so fortunate for him, California is about to fall into the sea.

Well, not quite.  Paul Giamatti is about to look serious and give important warnings about the earthquakes, each stronger than the one before, that are going to turn the West Coast cities to rubble.  His role is to look worried all the time, and he does, while his buff colleague goes off and does the exciting heroic things, and his student assistants look young and pretty and play with computers and tap into things that don’t really require tapping into or, in the case of a major seismic event, would probably not work that well anyway.

But the real star of the show is the Rock’s incredibly tanned (but white?) and blue-eyed daughter, about to go to College / University, and last seen having a good time with Woody Harrelson in True Detective.  Blake (played by Alexandra Daddadrio from the Percy Jackson movies) is every inch her father’s daughter (they may have the same cup size?) and takes charge when things go down in San Francisco, saving two English brothers who for some convoluted reason came to San Francisco from the UK when their parents were on a tropical cruise, and one decided to go for a job there.  As you do.

So, those are the players and the backdrop is a natural disaster.  But it’s a bit hard to get involved with any of them.  The disaster is quite generic, the destruction impressive in scale but basically ends up “building falls down” for most of the 2 hour running time.  The Rock and his Estranged Wife are busy having heart to hearts as the Rock abandons his job as a rescuer and basically steals his work helicopter to go and find his daughter, rescuing members of the public only once in his trip, and otherwise ignoring them or running them down with the various conveyances he uses to get to San Francisco.  And as for the daughter and her band of merry men… actually, they are okay, though the younger brother gets a bit annoying after about 5 minutes.

So, in the end, it’s hard to really care about the characters, not helped by the very unimaginative perils that the family face.  There is no tension to the movie as there is no doubt as to who will live and who will die (though I won’t spoil the non-spoilers here), and the most exciting rescue takes place at the start at the Hoover Dam and basically without any of the family present.

There is some amusement to be had, however.  The Rock is a screen presence that is hard to resist, and Kylie Minogue and ex-Kiwi Simone Kessel show up for a few minutes, though Kylie actually gets to speak.  There is also a good deal of ethnic diversity on screen, though the scale feels a bit like someone was ticking boxes in the back office.  

But overall, the film didn’t have anyone on the edge of their seat, or exclaiming with surprise or relief.  It just had an audience that came, saw and left, and there wasn’t too much else to say.

Verdict: San Andreas is a generic disaster flick that totally fails to inspire much thrills or any tension and is saved only by a fairly competent and likeable and quite attractive cast.  I have seen worse.  6 richters out of 10.