Movie Review: San Andreas Will Survive, Thanks to its CGI Team
San Andreas pulls it through with just special effects — no story, no character build-up, and hardly any soul.
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San Andreas is firmly ensconced in the ‘disaster film’ genre with all the necessary accouterments to go with it. It has a minimalist storyline, hastily sketched characters, and some stunning special effects. Throw in a couple of scoops of science jargon and Seismology, and there you have it!
There is something eerie about watching gigantic earthquakes ripping apart major cities of America, especially with what we have seen and experienced in the last couple of weeks. But with the 3 glasses perched on our noses, we manage to distance ourselves enough to enjoy a visually stunning but an otherwise flippant depiction of earthquakes and tsunami.
We are talking of quakes that measure 9.5 and more on the Richter scale. From the humongous Hoover Dam to the colossal Golden Gate bridge, everything is falling apart like a pack of cards. We see whole cities turn into rubble as the San Andreas fault lines get activated and consume Los Angeles and San Francisco. The only person who looks in control is Ray, a fire department rescue-helicopter pilot played by the inimitable Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. He has a bird’s eye view of the destruction below and arbitrarily decides to save his ex-wife before the Interval, and his daughter post it.
With the mammoth swathes of tragedy playing out in the background, it is this blinkered direction of Brad Peyton that robs the film off any soul. While innumerable unnamed people can be seen dying, we are meant to care about only a handful of characters. Ray and his family are also entangled in a tsunami of their own.
His ex-wife (Carla Gugino) has decided to move in with her super rich boyfriend, while his plans to spend time with his daughter (Alexandra Daddario) are always in jeopardy. The cracks in this dysfunctional family suddenly take centre stage while skyscrapers are being mercilessly flattened all around. This is what also activates the fault lines in the movie.
What the film is lacking in terms of character and soul, it makes up with its Entertainment quotient. The CGI and 3 D experience is great, the special effects staggering. The adrenaline rush keeps our attentiveness soaring. Since the film delivers what it had promised in spite of being relentless in its depiction of destruction and repetitive sequence of events it can still hold out for a one time watch.
I’ll go with 3 QUINTS OUT OF 5 only for stunning visuals and the equally formidable Dwayne Johnson.