Fun Albeit By The Numbers Disaster B-Movie

Author: Space_Mafune from Newfoundland, Canada
8 January 2007

Head of Los Angeles Emergency Operations Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) and plucky seismologist Dr.Amy Barnes(Anne Heche)find themselves dealing with a crisis of monumental proportions when Los Angeles is suddenly threatened by an erupting volcano!

While I have serious doubts with regards to the legitimacy of a lot of what's presented on screen, that's also true of most disaster films and make no mistake, that is what this is... a 1990s attempt at updating the classic 1970s style disaster B-movie. It has the usual disaster movie focus of looking at the crisis from the point of view of several key, barely fleshed out aside from our leads, characters. It is a little slow getting started but once the lava flows, I have to admit I just sat back, grabbed some popcorn and had fun watching this one.

Where this movie best succeeds is in its portrayal of human courage in the face of impending doom and disaster, my favorite scenes being the hurried rescue aboard the stranded subway train, Roark running in front of a falling building in an effort to save his only daughter and Dr. Calder trying valiantly to save lives in the middle of a busy street. Where it falters is in its attempt to say something about race relations, those scenes proving absolutely groan inducing. Plus it offers very little truly new and surprising, very little we haven't seen in movies of this type before, but at the end of the night, I have to admit it held my interest as a fun, popcorn movie.