San Andreas - A Movie Review

The ground may crumble beneath us, but family holds everything together.

San Andreas destroyed theaters in 2015. A massive earthquake hits California, destroying the city. Ray Gaines, a rescue pilot, attempts to save his ex-wife and daughter from the tremendous destruction as the world slowly crumbles.

San Andreas contains every disaster trope cliche in an erupting volcano - except that’s not this disaster film’s plot! It’s a predictable film with no surprises and little originality. So, why do I watch it? For the disaster, of course!

The actors know this is a heavily cliched film but do well in all the chaos. I have come to love Dwayne Johnson. This was the film that defined his dramatic abilities. In contrast to Ray’s buff trademark, he’s charismatic and vulnerable as a broken father. Johnson did an excellent job conveying his emotional arc.

Carla Gugino is another talented actress. Johnson and Gugino play the usual divorced couple who (clearly) still have feelings for each other. Ray and Emma stick together in the chaos and defend each other. The pair worked well together and were funny in some dialogue scenes. Johnson’s (ad-libbed) ‘second base’ comment will always make me chuckle.

Blake (Alexandra Daddario) is in her own survival story with two new friends, Ben and Ollie, played by Hugo Johnstone-Burt and Art Parkinson. They work together in the chaos. Unsurprisingly, a love story brews amidst a disaster crumbling beneath their feet. Daddario is great in the role, but the writing surrounding the character wasn’t written strongly.

I never expected to deplore someone like Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd) whose fate was not punishable enough. Paul Giamatti plays Dr. Lawrence Hayes, a seismologist who warns of impending doom.

More credits include Archie Panjabi, Will Yun Lee, and hundreds of extras playing residents of Los Angeles, running in panic around the shambling city. Look very closely, and you’ll see an actor from season 3 of Stranger Things. I’ll give you a hint, his name is almost similar in spelling.

Disaster movies have one integral detail and that is - how can they make the next catastrophic event more catastrophic? Amidst the melodrama nonsense and overload of disaster tropes, Brad Peyton spoke with Thomas Jordan, the director of the Southern California Earthquake Center to fact-check anything about earthquakes to ensure accuracy.

Fact-checking the disasters was more important than the writer's team. Characters have unrealistic dialogue and it’s a predictable story. The characters undergo the usual family dramas seen in most films or soaps. However, there is one line from Gugino that my friend and I like to laugh about when her character leaves a threatening message to her boyfriend.

Some disaster sequences defy logic, mainly to enhance viewers' excitement - which it does. In one of the hardest films he ever did, Peyton went for realism, which is why most of the cast did their own stunts. “My focus in the movie was to make it as realistic as possible,” Peyton commented. It gave the cast more of a sense of their motivations.

The special effects are achieved as buildings collapse and the earth cracks open. Over 1300 special effects are utilized for this film. Every sequence makes your heart pound. It gets your adrenaline pumping as characters race away from walls of water, avoid buildings toppling over, or hold their breath in the tiniest air pockets.

At its heart, San Andreas is a story about family love. It was the 14th highest-grossing film of 2015. The film may not break new ground in the disaster genre, but it is one entertaining and epic ride.