San Andreas | Little White Lies

San Andreas

28 May 2015 / Released: 29 May 2015

Two people, a man and a woman, standing next to a navy blue vehicle. The man is wearing a navy blue t-shirt and the woman is wearing a burgundy top.
Two people, a man and a woman, standing next to a navy blue vehicle. The man is wearing a navy blue t-shirt and the woman is wearing a burgundy top.
3

Anticipation.

We’ll happily give a disaster movie starring The Rock a go.

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Enjoyment.

Big, booming and very dumb.

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In Retrospect.

Hard to ignore its faults.

Crash bang wal­lop! Dwayne John­son sizes up Moth­er Nature in this sub-Emmerichi­an actioner.

There aren’t many celebri­ties worth fol­low­ing on Insta­gram. Dwayne John­son (@therock) is one of them. From set­ting obscure world records (loves a self­ie does our Dwayne) to giv­ing moti­va­tion­al pep talks at the gym to show­ing some love to his ador­ing fans across the globe, his feed serves as a dai­ly reminder of the qual­i­ties that have trans­formed the for­mer WWE wrestling champ into a bonafide top-billed movie star. More than any­thing, though, John­son always appears to be hav­ing a great time, as if in that exact moment there’s noth­ing he’d rather be doing, nowhere he’d rather be.

Which brings us on to the yawn­ing fun vac­u­um that is San Andreas. It’s not that Johnson’s chis­elled charis­ma and infec­tious enthu­si­asm doesn’t trans­late from social media to the sil­ver screen (s/​o Michael Bay’s crim­i­nal­ly mis­un­der­stood Pain & Gain), more that these win­ning traits are sur­plus to require­ments in direc­tor Brad Peyton’s dis­as­ter porn epic. Here, the actors’ pri­ma­ry func­tion is to ser­vice the action, the char­ac­ters mere con­duits for the large­ly expo­si­tion­al, jar­gon-heavy dia­logue that con­nects each con­trived plot point like nee­dle strokes on a seis­mo­graph. It’s mass destruc­tion for mass con­sump­tion, cheap thrills for demo­li­tion per­verts, and it’s crush­ing­ly dull.

Guid­ing us through the chaos and con­fu­sion are Ray just doing my job ma’am” Gaines (John­son), a heli­copter pilot in the Los Ange­les Fire Depart­ment, and Lawrence (Paul Gia­mat­ti), a surly-solemn Cal­tech prof who wears the per­ma­nent look of a man who’s aggriev­ed at being refused entry to his local Wether­spoons despite the fact he’s clear­ly still drunk from the night before and it hap­pen­ing to be Christ­mas Day. Though their paths nev­er direct­ly crossed, these men share plen­ty of com­mon ground. Both are recent­ly bereaved, both are in the busi­ness of sav­ing lives and both thrive in high-risk sit­u­a­tions – in this case the whole of Cal­i­for­nia comes under threat when a mas­sive quake at the Hoover Dam trig­gers a chain reac­tion along the epony­mous fault-line.

For Lawrence, this means gaw­ping in hor­ror at var­i­ous charts and com­put­er mon­i­tors which seem to be dis­play­ing the results of a par­tic­u­lar­ly intense spiro­graph ses­sion and mak­ing insight­ful obser­va­tions such as this is real­ly bad” and oh, shit!” while offer­ing his best layman’s def­i­n­i­tion of a swarm event”. For Ray, it’s about doing what needs to be done in order to res­cue his soon-to-be ex-wife Emma (Car­la Gug­i­no) and daugh­ter Blake (Alexan­dra Dad­dario), who have recent­ly moved in with a shit­bag prop­er­ty mag­nate named Daniel Rid­dick, played with spine­less zeal by Ioan Gruffudd.

Despite his dec­o­rat­ed ser­vice his­to­ry and the fact he looks like he’s just eat­en an entire bison for break­fast, Ray is pre­sent­ed as the kind of every­day hero you might unwit­ting­ly pass on the street one minute only to be dragged from a pile of smok­ing rub­ble by the next. An all-action, all-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly man who’s sim­ply in the wrong place at the right time. But John­son is no John McClane, and San Andreas is no Die Hard. (For starters it’s sur­pris­ing­ly light on com­ic relief – unless you hap­pen to be a suck­er for base­ball-themed innu­en­do.) This is brash, po-faced spec­ta­cle cin­e­ma of tec­ton­ic pro­por­tions, a titan­ic Her­cules vs Moth­er Nature clash in which any hint of authen­tic human dra­ma is smoth­ered by wave after wave of CG-dri­ven aftershocks.

When the dust even­tu­al­ly set­tles and the set­piece stack­ing sub­sides – Los Ange­les lev­elled, the Bay Area oblit­er­at­ed, our faith in Hollywood’s abil­i­ty to pro­duce orig­i­nal tent­pole titles in ruins – Pey­ton signs off with an unabashed salute to the brave men and women of America’s emer­gency med­ical ser­vices. It’s a moment of shame­less grand­stand­ing mas­querad­ing as chest-thump­ing patri­o­tism that would be ripe for par­o­dy had Team Amer­i­ca not already got there a decade ago. In pure block­buster terms, San Andreas rais­es the bar through the sheer scale of the hav­oc it wreaks, but amid all the top­pling sky­scrap­ers and tidal waves it becomes almost impos­si­ble to pin­point the film’s emo­tion­al epicentre.

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