Things&Ink

Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward. On th-ink.co.uk Harry will be writing a series of posts in which he will be sharing his opinions on things he has watched…

San Andreas, 2015, Cert 12, dir Brad Peyton 

Why do big budget American filmmakers insist on making disaster movies and expect us to be entertained by them? Even worse, why do they ask us to take them seriously? If you wanted to make a movie about the power of the human spirit overcoming disaster, you could make a documentary about real tragedies like the recent earthquakes and tsunamis in Asia. However there has been a pattern of American disaster movies pitting everyday Americans against fictional natural calamities. The problem with these films is that they try everything they can to get sympathy for their everyday American characters. Nine times out of ten they fail through bad writing. San Andreas is no exception.

The only good point I can think of for this film is that it is based on some real geology, or geology I remember learning at school. The San Andreas fault line is a crack in the Earth’s crust which just happens to sit under the west coast of America. Regions that sit over divisions between the tectonic plates (like Japan, to give another example) have suffered horrendous earthquakes because the plates are constantly moving and rubbing each other, causing tremors. On the San Andreas line, the plates are moving apart and a small piece of the American West coast will eventually break off and become an island. This process is depicted in the film, just speeded up. Somebody clearly read about this theory and thought it would make a great movie.

The fact this film is loosely based on some geology doesn’t save it from being a ridiculous farce. For one thing, the hero is a rescue helicopter pilot played by ex-wrestler Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson. Johnson has made a name for himself as a muscle-bound action hero for the 21st century, being cast in such suitable roles as Hercules and the Fast and Furious franchise. So when I’m watching a film with Dwayne Johnson I expect him to play an action hero. I do not expect emotional drama.

Johnson is playing a heroic pilot but he also happens to be a father going through a divorce. In the middle of his emotional turmoil earthquakes of mighty magnitude strike the San Andreas area, endangering his various family members who he attempts to round up and save. So he performs various action man stunts like pulling distracted drivers out of their wrecked cars and even knocking out a looter with his own gun. But there are also scenes where he has long intimate conversations with his wife about their family situation and a previous daughter who tragically drowned. The screenwriters have clearly gone to some lengths to build some family history for the main characters to get the audience interested. But it doesn’t quite work when the male character is a towering body builder and the female’s hair is always beautifully styled despite said woman surviving collapsing buildings and floods. In short, as hard as the actors tried their characters and their situation just weren’t believable.

While watching the film, I was getting confused about whether I should be paying attention to the good-looking everyday disaster survivors overcoming their marital strife or the spectacular, CGI scenes of tumbling sky scrapers and flooded streets. In fact, I always find it worrying when these disaster movies present earthquakes and tsunamis as excuses for epic set pieces to entertain audiences, when the devastation they cause in the real world is all too clear.

I felt the makers of San Andreas needed to decide whether they were making a tasteless exploitation of natural disasters or an intimate family drama. You can’t really do both. Worse still is to turn this mess into some form of American patriotism. The film begs sympathy for American citizens by placing them through grand suffering and destroying their famous landmarks, then emphasising how great they are with the few triumphant survivors. It felt a little like the filmmakers were creating their own 9/11. I’m not saying Americans don’t deserve sympathy for their tragedies, but I can’t help feeling that the amount of effort and money spent on San Andreas could have been used, as I said before, to raise awareness of real natural disasters or even to provide relief for the victims.

It is unclear what the intentions of the makers of San Andreas were, but they have made an action-packed slice of nonsense you can stick on in the background and vaguely pay attention to while you do more important things. You also get to see Kylie Minogue in a very minor role.