Saturday, October 11, 2014

Movie Reviews #9 - Volcano (1997)




















Plot: (from imdb.com) A volcano erupts in downtown L.A., threatening to destroy the city.

Review: In the 90s there was a resurgence of disaster movies. They were never really good but for the most part they were entertaining. In this movie, as the above synopsis says, a volcano erupts in Los Angeles and only Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche can stop it. The movie is effective in creating a tense situation. The danger feels real and it engages the viewer. The scenes with lava, ash and all the other related occurrence look good for the time. The lava especially is convincing. It feels like it does really flow in the street and destroys everything it touches. On another plus side, Keith David is in this. He only shows up halfway through the movie but I can’t go on without mentioning he’s in this. He’s always one cool guy.
           
            Not everything is good though. There are some very cheesy and terrible scenes. They often have parts where it shows people with differences working together. One particularly terrible scenes involves a kid looking for his mom saying everyone looks the same as they are covered in ash, showing that race is not important in these matters. Almost barfed in my mouth a bit. Worse of all they suffer from annoying children syndrome. There’s a brat that runs around in the middle of the street in front of an exploding building like an idiot and Tommy Lee Jones’s daughter is annoying as fuck, thinking she’s more important than a city being destroyed. They are also somehow able to do this at ridiculous speed, like collapse an entire building within 20 minutes.

            It’s a decent movie that has holes in it but is entertaining. The actors involved make it watchable and it would have been a chore if worse people were involved.

Score : 7/10

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