San Andreas

Released:  May 29^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Starring:  Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Art Parkinson, Paul Giamatti, Archie Panjabi

Directed by:  Brad Peyton        

Written by:  Carlton Cuse

Personal Bias Alert:  expected a lot of cheese, tired of seeing the Golden Gate Bridge destroyed

6.5 of 10

            From the opening frame, San Andreas nods assuredly at the audience and delivers what people came for.  It takes mere seconds for big, dumb danger to race to the forefront, and the sequence that follows hits you with goofy dialogue, implausible action, and Dwayne Johnson saving the day.  This down and dirty approach works in disaster films, especially when the filmmakers are smart enough to minimize plot and character, providing audiences with fleeting thrills at a much cheaper rate than their local theme park.

            San Andreas is, of course, named after the San Andreas Fault, a tectonic boundary running through the west coast of the US that is prone to large earthquakes.  Paul Giamatti’s Lawrence, a seismologist, gives a rundown of the history and the devastating effects of such quakes early on so you don’t have to rely on your memories of middle school geology.  Lawrence pops in throughout the film to give helpful explanations of just what’s coming, but most of the film focuses on the family of Johnson’s Ray as they try to find each other during the largest recorded earthquake in human history (because what’s the point of a disaster movie if you’re not destroying things at ridiculously epic proportions).

            And destroy things it does, with a CGI triple whammy of LA, San Francisco, and the Hoover Dam getting the shakes.  These three spots give the film plenty of famous landmarks to crumble, and the spacing of these and the rest of the action sequences are the film’s strongest aspect.  They’re close without being too close, maintaining tension and suspense without getting numbing.  The brief interludes are filled in with material that variously does and doesn’t work, but the scale tips just towards working.  Giamatti is used sparingly, but his weathered delivery of portentous lines bounces well off of Archie Panjabi’s stoic reporter.  However, the strongest pauses belong to the young threesome played by Alexandra Daddario, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, and Art Parkinson.  They’re trying to survive the epicenter that is San Francisco, all while Daddario and Johnstone-Burt strike up a surprisingly easy and genuine-feeling romance.  Parkinson is relegated to the little brother tag along, but even he gets what might be the funniest line in the movie.

What doesn’t work as well is the interludes with Johnson’s Ray and Gugino’s Emma, who are trying to get to their daughter (Daddario) while awkwardly bickering about their failed marriage.  It suffers from the insertion of an unnecessary plot point that doesn’t have enough time to be fleshed out and never adds much to the story.  The rest of the plot is intelligently small in scale, focusing on a group of basic but likable characters who let the big action take the forefront.  Too much plot is often a killer in disaster films, grinding the tension to a halt while characters chat about problems that are inconsequential compared to the grand things going on around them.  Ray and Emma’s exchanges often start the gears grinding, but they thankfully never bring the thing to a complete halt.

What’s most disappointing are the times when the CGI budget fails to render director Brad Peyton’s vision.  San Andreas worked with about half the budget of many modern summer blockbusters, but its destruction scale far surpasses most of these films.  This means that Peyton had to rely on lots CGI, and even with that budget concession there are still shots that were obviously a low priority.  There’s the occasional rubbery people and crumbling debris that fall with entirely the wrong amount of weight, but in the film’s defense, most of the sequences seem breathtakingly real, otherwise the film wouldn’t hold together.

No one will come out of San Andreas touting its labyrinthine plot and deep characters, but anyone expecting these things from it must not live in the same world as the rest of us.  The film just wants to give you some thrills and a bit of spectacle, which it delivers in a well-paced, agreeable package.  And then The Rock skydives out of a plane.

Other Notes (Ridiculous Disaster Version)

Ø  There’s a lot of ample-chested women running in bras that aren’t made for running.

Ø  I feel like the laws of physics wouldn’t have allowed them to get over that tsunami wave.

Ø  Why does Ray know how to drive everything?

Ø  How do your legs get stuck by debris without injury or at least a tear in your jeans?

Other Notes (Regular Version)

Ø  Archie Panjabi!

Ø  I appreciate that the main characters, particularly the women, knew what to do and weren’t putting themselves in unnecessary danger.

Ø  No, this is not a movie version of the Grand Theft Auto game.

Furious 7

Released:  April 3^rd, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Universal Pictures

Starring:  Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Kurt Russell, Jason Statham

Directed by:  James Wan

Written by:  Chris Morgan

Personal Bias Alert:  never seen any Fast & Furious movies, intrigued by James Wan directing

3 of 10

            Nothing in Furious 7 is subtle; the cars are fast, the butts are in your face, and the ‘character beats’ hit you like a sledgehammer.  Obviously, this film’s production was difficult given the death of star Paul Walker mid-shooting, and the last thing I wanted to do was badmouth him or this film.  No matter what kind of films he made or how he died, Walker was a person, and the life of a person demands respect.  That sentiment and the cast and crew’s personal loss colors this film, but it’s still a movie, and I still didn’t like it, as much as I cringe even writing that.

            Preceding all this, many people’s curiosity was piqued when James Wan, a horror auteur known for Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring, was selected as the next director for the series.  An action film about a street racing crew seemed out of his wheelhouse, and while horror gives its directors plenty of opportunity for lavish style, the Fast & Furious films are lavish in an entirely different way.  They are essentially a string of action set pieces, the bigger the better, held loosely together by a faint plot.  Wan certainly understood the formula, as Furious 7 is chock full of ridiculously staged action that knows to focus more on making things look cool than having it make any sense.  One of the biggest sequences, which featured prominently in the trailers, is a scene where cars and drivers were dropped from a plane.  It is insane in every way; it could never happen in a world where physics exists, but it still gets your heart pounding.  Wan captured this and every other action sequence with well-staged shots and quick cuts, barraging audiences with thrilling images that pass by in such rapid succession that they rarely make sense or add up to any clear idea of what the hell is going on.  These thrills are quick and cheap (in the sense that they’re meaningless, not that they don’t cost a hell of a lot of money).  However, this is the same effect you would get from watching well-funded clips in quick succession.  It is not a movie.

            The loose plot that holds these sequences together involves the murderous revenge by the brother of a man the crew took down in a previous film.  The crew, led by Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, bands together in a kill-or-be-killed situation that turns into one of the most cleanly convoluted plots I’ve seen in years.  It’s clean only because the characters explain in painfully repetitive exposition what the next step in the process is.  The process itself doesn’t make a lick of sense, which, admittedly, didn’t seem to be a goal of Furious 7.  It was much more genuine about its subplot surrounding Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner struggling to settle into family life, juxtaposing that with how easily he operates in the impromptu family of the crew.  As Furious 7 is the opposite of subtle, they ram this down your throat by constantly referring to each other as family and having everyone talk about Brian’s conundrum.  It’s clunky because it was certainly added in after Walker’s death, but it’s mostly heartfelt, especially when it’s coming from Diesel’s mouth.

            Thankfully, Walker turned in a fine performance.  He sold the outrageous action well, as did most of the cast, and they looked good standing next to cars.  Little more was asked of them, and the few scenes that do contain human dialogue was rushed through so quickly that poor performances were hardly worth noting.

            Simply put, this movie is not for me.  I don’t care about cars or muscles or derrieres.  I’m bored by mindless action and momentary thrills, and most of all, I hate wooden characters, the ones that masquerade as people when their entire persona and relationships can be summed up in a single phrase (which one character actually does).  None of these things are charming to me, nor does it pass for mindless entertainment, which is what many people praise these films for being the epitome of.  Furious 7’s chosen idiocy actively offends even the most basic parts of my brain, and that just isn’t fun to me.

Other Notes

Ø  The title on the movie poster is Furious 7.  The title card on the movie is Furious Seven.  Did no one discuss how the title was going to be written?

Ø  This is the kind of movie where a character says they’re going to Dubai, then it cuts to them in Dubai, and there’s still text at the bottom of the screen indicating that it’s Dubai.  You know, in case you forgot what the character said five seconds ago.

Ø  I feel like crap writing this.  RIP Paul Walker