Official Synopsis
After the infamous San Andreas Fault gives, triggering a magnitude 9-plus earthquake in California, a search and rescue helicopter pilot (Dwayne Johnson) and his estranged wife (Carla Gugino) make their way together from Los Angeles to San Francisco to save their only daughter.
But their treacherous journey north is only the beginning. And when they think the worst may be over…it’s just getting started.
I don’t mind disaster films. They have some sort of senseless charm about them. Independence Day, which I think tried to tell a story in the middle of a disaster film and failed miserably, was the type of movie I could sit down and watch on any given day (just the destruction part). Towering Inferno, with all its drama, is another disaster film that I could sit and watch. San Andreas, bless its heart, is a disaster film that stretches itself too thin with character plot points and has a tough time staying on track with the only draw for the film outside of Dwayne Johnson — the disaster part.
Let’s get right to it.
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The first act sets everyone up like any good disaster film should. We get to know our main man, Ray (Dwayne Johnson), who is a helicopter rescue pilot that demonstrates from the get-go that he is ready to put everything on the line to see people out of disastrous situations. The first act has Ray (and his crew) saving a girl from certain death over a cliff. Once saved, the story quickly shifts to Ray silently explaining in the span of 60 seconds that he has a daughter (through a phone call) and that he has an ex-wife (through divorce documents). The story jumps around a bit, lands here and there, introducing minor roles, such as a professor, Lawrence (Paul Giamatti), who studies earthquakes and tectonic shifts and is pretty much the doomsday soothsayer for the rest of the film. We also get introduced to Ray’s ex-wife, Emma (Carla Gugino), and her soon-to-be lousy husband Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd), as well as Blake (Alexandra Daddario), Emma and Ray’s daughter. All of these folks are set up in the first act.
This is how you begin a disaster film. You introduce your players, you give them roles and then by act two you set their fates in motion. It’s a typical way of doing things in a disaster movie and it works for the film quite well. There is nothing wrong with the first act, just don’t go into it expecting to be surprised because you can already see who is going to live and die (Oh, Daniel, we hardly knew ye).
Act two begins with a wonderful bang…or more specifically Hoover Dam erupting, killing people and setting the disaster for the rest of the film in motion. Once it all gets going, all the film has to do at this point is sit back and wait for the disaster to unfold and just place people like chess pieces in their proper places to make the disaster widespread. Act two does its best to do this, as Emma is placed at the top of a building, Blake is placed in another building, in another city and set up with destined-to-be-boyfriend, Ben (Hugo Johnstone-Burt), and his brother to have dramatic struggles of survival. As act two should be, it’s spent getting the characters adjusted to their situation and puts them in the position to either die or survive. Most survive.
Act two is fine, but the varying storylines seem a bit out of balance. We get too much of one story (Blake and Ben), not enough development in another (Ray and Emma), and we are way short on Lawrence’s development, which deserves to be a bit deeper than the rest (he is the expert and should be able to lay it on thick about how serious the situation is for everyone). This is my biggest complaint about the film. It really needed to focus on the important characters and just attach the rest through them, feeding off their story.
As the movie spirals into act three and the disaster of nature begins to subside leaving the aftermath as the main concern (crumbling buildings, things exploding, etc.), the movie just kind of loses itself. Ultimately, it all ends well, but the second act imbalance with character stories really doesn’t do much for the needed impending urgency that comes with disaster movies. What I can only conclude is that the film just stretched itself out too thin with characters and stories. Director Brad Peyton and his writers seemed like they didn’t fully get the purpose of a disaster film. Disaster films are always shallow on story and focused mainly on disaster with a few main characters pushing it along. He probably needed to leave some characters behind in development, which might have helped things move and focus quite a bit.
As it stands, San Andreas isn’t a complete disaster, but it spends too much time on story and not enough time doing what it should have done in the throughout, which is concentrate solely on the terrible disasters.
On the Blu-ray side of the equation, while I can’t say the special effects look good when compared to the practical, the Blu-ray transfer in general is pretty solid. It certainly isn’t anything Warner Home Video did wrong, rather the effects just don’t do justice to the actuals. You can see the CG pretty strongly, as the green screened portion of the production is a bit underwhelming as a finished product. There are some really terrible textures through the HD quality picture. On the bright side, when the scenes are outside, in the ‘real’ environments, the picture looks clear, clean and crisp. No issues with color banding or anything of that nature. So, stay for the practical effects and real environments, squint and pretend it all looks good when you see the CG in action.
In terms of special features, here’s what you’re looking at:
– San Andreas: The Real Fault Line
– Dwayne Johnson to the Rescue
– Scoring the Quake
– Commentary by director
– Deleted Scenes
– Gag Reel
– Stunt Reel
The special features are impressive, some more so than the finished production (especially the first feature). Good quality stuff, even the commentary and the reels.
Onto the summary!