Hollywood filmmakers have this unique knack for destroying entire cities - even entire countries. This’destruction’ genre has spewed lots of movies over the past decades, with the’perpetrator of the destruction’ ranging from fierce tornados to nuclear wipeouts. Cities and states get repeatedly wiped out and resurrected in the graphics & effects labs of Hollywood, but the genre never gets wiped out!
The last movie I watched on this’destruction’ theme was a almost 3-hour torture named "2012" where the entire earth gets wiped out except a few families who get on to Noah’s Ark and sail nowhere. The moment I came out of the cinema doors, I promised myself I would never see another destruction-themed movie again. But then, San Andreas caught my eye. Dwayne Johnson looked appealing. Somehow I thought it wouldn’t be another run-of-the mill movie. I booked myself on the first weekend.
The beginning The movie embarks on the destruction story from the first shot itself. No preludes, no intros. As the story proceeds, the characters get introduced one by one but with each passing minute, it gets more and more predictable. So, there’s a small quake, then a couple of nerds predict a bigger quake, and then they predict an even bigger quake, and then they break the news that the worst will happen. And what do they do? Ask people to evacuate. So stereotypical and so predictable. And you know what would happen next. Gridlocked roads, cars going helter-skelter and crashing into each other, people running everywhere but going nowhere, skyscrapers that come down like cards. And in the midst of all this chaos, there is the sorry story of the protagonist, Dwayne Johnson who plays "Ray" - a rescue trooper with a troubled family.
Waiting for the end If you thought it wasn’t bad already, it starts getting worse from here. At the first hint of a strong tremor, Ray abandons all his official responsibilities, and the entire movie becomes a story of how he rescues his family taking his official chopper as a personal aircraft. He seems to be having all liberty - the state troopers don’t seem to radio him with any instructions, As a trooper, isn’t he supposed to rescue other people? People around them keep dying, but nobody’s even concerned - it’s almost as if they are not even a part of the movie. Your eyes get sore with the special effects and the computer-generated graphics of building collapsing and continents cracking. No, the movie is not about the quake, really. It’s about Ray, his wife and his kids. And what’s worse? You know where this is all heading. You get so bored, you wait desperately for the story to end. Finally, the world comes to an end with a 9.6-scale quake but Ray successfully rescues his entire family and the movie ends happily in the middle of a destroyed city. And we still aren’t concerned with the destruction all around.
The bottomline San Andreas does it again. Another 2-and-half-hour torturous movie where the world gets destroyed but the protagonist’s family survives.Is there anything missing? Yes - this time around, there’re no guns and no presidential speech from the White House!