San Andreas
(2015)
Carlton
Cuse penned the screenplay for San
Andreas, presumably the Carlton Cuse of Nash
Bridges and The Strain, rather
than the one who shepherded Lost and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr to TV
screens. The movie’s major claim to fame, and why it did a belter at the box
office, is that it was shot in 3D. As such, it’s an unapologetic deluge of spectacle
at the expense of any kind of logic, depth of characterisation or
self-awareness.
The latter
is San Andreas’ key failing, really.
Helmed by someone other than Brad Peyton, it might easily have teetered on the
brink of Airplane!-type bemusement
with its own absurdity and idiocy. This is a movie, as others have pointed out,
where our hero Ray, (Dwayne Johnson – The Rock to you and me) who has notched
up 600 documented cases of rescues to his name in Afghanistan (he’s a goddam
veteran!) and with the LA Fire Department Air Rescue, sods off when he has more
important matters cooking; he heads off in his chopper to rescue his wife (Carla
Gugino) and daughter. I guess the sheer force of bravery, goodwill and Rock-like
decency he has hitherto built up are unassailable, justifying his dereliction
of duty; you can derelicte his balls!
Like Bruce
in Die Hard, Ray’s wife’s looking to
divorce him, having hooked up with loathsome stinker Ioan Gruffudd; if you
didn’t know he was a loathsome stinker for being British, the message is
signed, sealed and ribboned when he leaves Ray’s daughter (Alexandra Daddario,
of True Detective fame) to die in a
parking garage. But wait, all English
people aren’t awful; impossibly posh Hugo Johnstone-Burt and his impossibly
irritating little brother Art Parkinson are on hand to save her.
Joining the
dots here, with the towering ineptitude of a swarm of Irwin Allen epics, is
Paul Giamatti’s Cassandra figure (“Professor,
it looks like the whole San Andreas fault line is being activated, and its
headed for San Francisco!” – just as Professor Paul predicted!) Early on he
witnesses the Hoover Dam being swept away like it’s 2012 all over again, except not nearly as much goofy fun. We never
find out what set off this carnage – terrorists, HAARP, aliens – although I think it’s safe to say it can’t have
been a purely natural phenomenon. With disaster porn like this, however, who
has time for reasons?
Or
consequences; Peyton and Cuse don’t care about anyone who isn’t within two degrees
of Ray, so this is guilt-free destruction; whole cities are flattened as earthquakes
quake and tsunamis torrent (how many nuclear power stations went down, I
wonder?), and if a few Kylie Minogues or Gruffudds are taken out along the way,
well they deserved it for being mean to Ray or Mrs Ray or their daughter. The
score runs the gamut from Inception-esque
BWAAAs to Lord of the Rings ethereal
choirs with little in-between, entirely in keeping with the unmitigated
bombast. It doesn’t bear close analysis why Ray must jump out of a plane (“It’s been a while since I got you to second
base”, he quips to Carla as they land on a baseball field), or ride a
tsunami; just be content in the knowledge that it seemed like a good idea at
the time.
San Andreas has earned a sequel, of course, which appears
to be taking the Die Harder route of
bringing back the entire cast and sending them to another place of impossible
peril (The Ring of Fire). Hopefully it will have a bit more fun with its ludicrousness.