Volcano.

A volcanic eruption in downtown Los Angeles...

Release Date: Apr. 25, 1997. Running Time: 103 minutes. Screenplay: Jerome Armstrong, Billy Ray. Producer: Andrew Z. Davis, Neal H. Mortiz, Lauren Shuler Donner. Director: Mick Jacson.


THE PLOT:

A minor earthquake in Los Angeles is of no particular concern - until a group of utility workers are burned to death in a storm drain at MacArthur Park. Office of Emergency Management Director Michael Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) investigates, and discovers hot gas venting through a crack in the concrete.

The following morning, another earthquake triggers a volcanic eruption at the La Brea Tar Pits. Roark, who is conveniently driving to the office through that area with his teenage daughter (Gaby Hoffmann), jumps into action, barking orders at everyone in sight to deal with each new phase of the emergency as it develops.

With help from geologist Amy Barnes (Anne Heche), Roark hatches a plan to wall the lava off from nearby homes. But Amy believes this is just the beginning of the crisis, and she is soon proved right. Lava is flowing through the underground transit tunnels. When it runs out of a tunnel, there will be an eruption even bigger than the first!

Roark rescues his daughter (Gaby Hoffmann).

CHARACTERS:

Michael Roark: Pragmatic and stubborn, he is determined to solve each problem as it comes, and hope to buy time to solve the next problem. When objections are raised, he sharply points out that if the lava breaks through, it will leave thousands of people defenseless. "You don't like my plan? That's good - Give me another plan. But don't tell me we're backing out!" By the end of the movie, his ingenuity is as exhausted as he is, prompting one of the few good character moments when he is forced to admit that he doesn't know what to do - Which, of course, is when inspiration strikes.

Amy Barnes: The requisite volcano expert and potential love interest - despite Anne Heche being more age appropriate to be cast as Tommy Lee Jones' daughter than as a potential girlfriend. That said, the age difference is the least of the problems with the character. Heche, an actress capable of very good work, has zero credibility in this role. She's introduced with the kind of spotlight close-ups old studio heads used to push their anointed starlets, and she overacts her lines as if she wandered in from a screwball comedy. Once the crisis hits, she alternates between reeling off exposition and arguing against Roark's plans to redirect the lava - even though volcanologists in the real world have actually recommended such plans to divert flow from homes (notably in Hawaii).

Emmit Reese: Don Cheadle manages the impossible, and actually engages as Roark's deputy. With Roark stuck at the scene, Emmit manages the response from the OEM office. Cheadle wrings a few genuine chuckles out of his character's wisecracks, while also summoning enough presence to convince as the de facto director.

Norman Calder: John Corbett, fresh from Northern Exposure, appears as a real estate developer involved with the film's requisite doctor (Jacqueline Kim). Most of his scenes are in the first third of the film... But since he doesn't come across as actively despicable, he's brought back at the end to bicker with his girlfriend over her insistence on treating the patients overwhelming her hospital. Just to make sure that we understand that businessman = baddie.

Fire trucks gather at the unconvincing special effect. 
If only Banjo-Kazooie was here!

THOUGHTS:

Though Dante's Peak beat it to the theaters, expectations were much higher for Volcano. It had a higher caliber cast: Tommy Lee Jones, at the height of his stardom; Anne Heche, who after attracting attention in some sharp indie films seemed to be on the cusp of stardom; and Don Cheadle, who had earned recent plaudits for his performance as a charming psychopath in Devil in a Blue Dress. It was bigger budget, with a script that the studio insisted was meatier than your average disaster fare, with running themes involving both racial inclusion and the value of preparedness.

Volcano significantly underperformed at the box office. A few critics gave its script credit for a degree of wit absent from Dante's Peak, but the bulk of the reviews were negative. While its rival remains a film people have fond memories of (arguably, fonder than the film itself deserves), Volcano is barely remembered.

And with good reason. For all its flaws, Dante's Peak is an effective formula picture with credible performances. In my review of it, I singled out the stupid driving-on-lava scene... But outside of that scene, much of the science bore an at least passing resemblance to reality. Volcano, by contrast, has its geologist character arguing against actual valid responses to lava flow, features multiple scenes of characters surviving what should be fatal proximity to lava, and ends by dropping a building on its lead characters. Who survive, with only some photogenically-applied ash to show for their problems. Basically, this is what you'd get if you made an entire movie out of the other film's driving-on-lava scene.

After spending hours breathing in ash, having glass explode repeatedly all over them, and even having a building dropped on them? Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, and the Jones moppet go not to the hospital to make sure they aren't going to die of the various particulates now in their lungs, but instead drive home. Because glass is harmless (apparently - not a single character is cut by glass at any point in this movie), and the respiratory system loves processing ash.

But hey, fiftyish Tommy Lee scores a young blonde hot chick, so... Happy endings all around!

Oh, and those heavily-hyped positive messages? Aside from "listen to experts" (except when they're wrong), the preparedness message amounts to nothing. Meanwhile, the racial overtones are heavy-handed and a bit insulting. We are told that a racist cop is "a good man" for letting a black man go free after arresting him for no reason. At the end of the movie, a child pipes up that everyone looks the same, prompting dramatic shots of the multi-racial cast all covered with ash. Deep stuff, kid.


OVERALL:

Um... Yeah, this was dumb. And bad. And ultimately rather boring. Not only is Dante's Peak better than this... I'd actually rank The Concorde: Airport '79 as better than this. It has some do-it-yourself Mystery Science Theater value. Other than that, I'd recommend running from this Volcano. As fast as your legs can carry you.


Overall Rating: 2/10.



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Dante's Peak.

A scientist (Pierce Brosnan) and a mayor (Linda Hamilton) have a very big problem...

Release Date: Feb. 7, 1997. Running Time: 108 minutes. Screenplay: Leslie Bohem. Producer: Gale Anne Hurd, Joseph Singer. Director: Roger Donaldson.


THE PLOT:

It is a good year for the small Washington town of Dante's Peak. Nestled comfortably beneath a long-dormant volcano that fuels the local hot springs, the community has been named the second best place to live in the United States (for populations 20,000 and under). There's even a bigshot developer is exploring potential investment in the community.

Volcanologist Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan), of the U. S. Geological Survey, is just performing a routine check of the volcano. He doesn't expect to find anything, and there are indications that his boss. Paul (Charles Hallahan), may have sent him here to force a vacation. Harry finds it pleasant enough, particularly when he meets Rachel (Linda Hamilton), the town's divorced mayor - who, once she confirms that Harry gets along with her two kids, seems very interested in him as well.

But Harry starts to find warning signs: Heightened acidity in the water, dead trees, a few dead squirrels. After he and Rachel discover a young couple boiled alive in the hot springs, he wants to put the town on alert. But Paul arrives with his team, insisting that they need to know more before inflicting permanent economic damage on the town. But by the time it becomes clear that the volcano is about to erupt, it may already be too late to save the townspeople...

Harry tries to convince his skeptical boss (Charles Hallahan) that the volcano is about to erupt.

CHARACTERS:

Harry Dalton: This is a film that believes in directly telling us who the characters are to avoid wasting time. As a result, one of the earliest scenes in the movie sees Harry's co-workers mocking him for refusing to take a vacation and for being unable to stop working - just to make absolutely certain that we understand he is a workaholic. Fortunately, Pierce Brosnan makes up for this sort of ham-handed dialogue with one of his better 1990s performances. We can physically see Harry moving from wariness to alarm as he investigates. He's also genuinely charming with Rachel's children, which makes potentially cloying scenes fairly enjoyable.

Rachel Wando: The script makes sure Rachel is a relatable character, doing her best to raise two generally likable children on her own while also acting as the town's mayor. When Harry raises his concerns about the volcano, it doesn't take her long to realize the economic implications, but she remains supportive of his efforts. She tells him that she hopes he's wrong - but that if he ends up being right, she's glad he's there.

Paul Dreyfus: I will credit the film with this: Most movies of this type would make Harry's obstructionist boss out to be a stupid, insufferable jackass. Paul is none of these things. He obstructs Paul, but mainly because he doesn't want to destroy a town over a false alarm - something he has seen happen in the past. He takes Harry's worries seriously enough to keep the team in town, directly monitoring the volcano, for a full week.  When actual proof is delivered to him, he acts. This being a movie, of course, his delays are disastrous - but in real life, Paul would probably be the ideal person to have in charge of this situation.

The Team: Dante's Peak was made in the wake of 1996's enormously successful Twister - a film that people enjoyed for many reasons, not least of which was the quirky team backing up the leads. That team is basically recycled wholesale, giving Harry backup whose role seems to be the care and manufacture of wisecracks. Twister did it better.  This generic team is composed of: a cynical Asian man, a cranky engineer, a coffee nut, and a girl. None of their characters have any depth beyond those descriptors, and I honestly couldn't tell you a single of their names without looking it up.

You will believe a truck can drive through lava! Wait, no.  No, you won't.

THOUGHTS:

The first of two volcano-themed disaster films in 1997, Dante's Peak beat Volcano to theaters by about two months and, at least in part because of that, managed to squeak out better box office. Which isn't to overstate the accomplishment - grossing $178 million against a $116 million budget, this was far from a megahit. Still, it would become comfortably profitable on home video, and it remains a better-remembered film than its rival.

I'll wait until re-watching and reviewing Volcano before declaring my thoughts on that. I will say that Dante's Peak is thoroughly professionally made in all respects. There isn't a single original beat in the script, but the movie knows its job and completes it with efficiency. Everything that plays into the second half is introduced in the first half, from the mountain home of Rachel's mother-in-law (Elizabeth Hoffman) to the presence of a NASA transmitter. Admittedly, you can sometimes feel the pieces being placed on the board ("there's a mine shaft - I wonder if that will play in later"), but it's still something of a relief to see a blockbuster whose script, however hackneyed, actually follows basic structural rules.

Like many disaster movies, it is a slow starter. The first thirty minutes is more than a little dull, not helped by dialogue that swings from functional to actively leaden. Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton give individually good performances, but they lack screen chemistry; Harry and Rachel aren't a disastrous movie couple by any means, but they don't really set off any sparks. One could be forgiven for thinking the two characters simply saw someone age-appropriate, likabe, and attractive and thought, "OK, good enough."

Once the disaster hits, at very nearly the film's exact midpoint, we are treated to some well-mounted scenes of destruction. Panicked drivers rush across a bridge to get out of town - only for the earth to shift so that the bridge separates from the other side, leading the cars directly into the earth. A mercenary helicopter pilot decides to fly in to rescue townspeople (at $15,000 per head), only for ash to get sucked into his engine and consign him and his passengers to a fiery doom. Later, the town is covered with ash, looking for all the world like a postcard from after the Apocalypse.

There are also some bits of pure nonsense. The last Act centers around Harry's rescue of Rachel of her children. At one point, he literally drives his truck across lava. A quick Google search reveals that lava reaches temperatures of more than 1000 degrees. Celsius. Brosnan, Hamilton, and the moppets should be as thoroughly cooked inside their truck as any shellfish. The filmmakers are apparently aware of how silly the scene is, because the family manages to rescue their lost dog at the same time.

Rachel tries to comfort her daughter (Jamie Renee Smith).

OVERALL:

Dante's Peak is not a particularly good movie, but it is a well-made and entertaining one. The first half follows the Jaws  formula of a hero meeting economically-motivated resistance in his attempts to warn people of impending disaster. The second half turns into a survival story, with the leads simply trying to stay alive until the disaster passes. The script is hackneyed, but it's still thoroughly professional in its structure.

If I sound less than excited... Well, it's because I'm not. This is certainly not a bad movie, but it's also not a particularly good one.  Still, with solid performances and good special effects, it is highly watchable. And at only a little over an hour forty (not counting end credits), it doesn't overstay its welcome.


Overall Rating: 5/10.



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