San Andreas isn’t as earth-shattering as expected!
Believe me when I say it’s been really hard for me to write this.
I’m a die-hard fan of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. I loved watching him in movies at both ends of the spectrum, be it Tooth Fairy or the Fast and the Furious franchisee. He has a certain charm and gives his all to the characters he portrays.
But somehow, just somehow, that charm is missing from San Andreas. He fails to connect with the audience (although box office collections may say otherwise).
Brad Peyton, the director, should take a little blame for it. His first collaboration with The Rock was Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, which was a catastrophe in itself.
The Rock plays the role of Ray Gaines, a search and rescue helicopter pilot working in the Los Angeles Fire Department.
At California Institute of Technology, seismologist Dr Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti) predicts a number of little tremors along the fault line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. It soon escalates and things go haywire.
Gaines goes to rescue his family — estranged wife Emma (Carla Gugino) and daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) — who’re away somewhere inside the city. Blake is being helped out by two brothers — Ben (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) and Ollie (Art Parkinson).
Hoover Dam is destroyed after the first quake and mayhem ensues.
Even while watching the movie, somewhere at the back of my mind, I felt San Andreas was the ‘poor cousin’ of another mammoth disaster movie — 2012. The destruction seems a lot smaller.
Though the tsunami effect was mind-blowing, what happened after was almost anticlimactic. After a point, the thrills and the shrieks become repetitive and kind of boring.
Maybe I went in with much expectations. It was a Rock movie after all. Somehow, it did not work for me. But do go if you love the Rock. I did.
Verdict: It’snothing we haven’t seen before. It could’ve been a bit more imaginative. The Rock, as usual, pleases. But the rest... let’s say it isn’t earth-shattering stuff! 5.5 out of 10.
