It just seems like the earthquake is strictly after Ray and his family from time to time, as they can’t seem to catch a break from certain doom.The Rock handles the big guy hero with ease and even has a few shots delivering some hilariously cheesy lines with big musical crescendos.ĭaddario and Gugino turn in excellent performances as well, as they are more or less put through the ringer more than a dozen times. That being said, ‘San Andreas‘ plays out quite well, with plenty of moments that will guarantee you to move to the edge of your seat. This is also a great way for Ray and Emma to work on their failed marriage, possibly due to an underused and ridiculous backstory. Most of the film is spent dodging falling buildings, avoiding sink holes, and a big typhoon as the split family tries to find each other. Ray is summoned to start rescuing in his helicopter when the big one hits and goes rogue to rescue his ex wife on top of a building, then off to find and save their daughter in another city. He soon realizes this is the pre-cursor for the mighty big one to tear apart the San Andreas fault, which happens soon after. Meanwhile, a seismologist (Paul Giamatti) at CalTech learns of a string of mini quakes around Las Vegas, when the big one hits, taking out a major landmark. Ben’s kid brother Ollie (Art Parkinson) is the smooth talking comedic relief of the film and is along for the ride through the earthquake too. This didn’t work at home though as his soon-to-be-ex-wife Emma (Carla Gugnio) wants a divorce and has moved in with her extremely wealthy land developer boyfriend Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd).Įmma and Ray have an 18 year-old daughter by the name of Blake (Alexandra Daddario, the beautiful mistress of Woody Harrelson from HBO’s ‘True Detective‘), who takes a ride with Daniel on his private plane where she meets Ben (Hugo Johnston-Burt), who is applying for a job with Daniel. Ray is the epitome of the good guy badass who can rescue and save anyone with a smile on his face, tell a quick joke to make you feel more comfortable, and probably fight three bears with chainsaw hands by himself. So, if you’re going to follow anyone in a massive earthquake type scenario, it might as well be The Rock, who plays Ray, a retired war pilot turned helicopter search and rescue pilot in Los Angles, as we see in the first scene of the film that strongly resembles the first few minutes of ‘ Cliffhanger‘. It knows that it wants to be full of action and peril with at least three sides of cheese, complete with funny one liners, fast close up pans of The Rock looking at the destruction, and even wind blown American flag hanging ever so slightly on the damaged rubble. What I like most about ‘San Andreas‘ is that it knows exactly what kind of movie it wants to be and commits one billion percent to it.
Earthquakes‘, even if it didn’t feature our main hero jumping solo out of an airplane and giving the natural disaster his iconic ‘People’s Elbow’, while yelling “If you smell what the Rock is cooking”, but I digress. It was definitely a missed opportunity to not title this film ‘The Rock v. Add on ‘Lost‘ writer Carlton Cuse, and you have ‘San Andreas‘, the movie that should be able to hold the championship belt at the box office, at least for a week or two.
It shouldn’t be any surprise that director Brad Peyton has teamed up with The Rock again for this disaster flick since their previous ‘ Journey 2: The Mysterious Island‘ did so well. Luckily for us, the summer of 2015 gave us ‘San Andreas‘, a full-scale earthquake action picture starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. It’s certainly been a while since we got to sit through an epic disaster film that featured earthquakes, volcanoes, twisters, a giant monster lizard, or even a ‘ Sharknado‘.
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