I'm feeling generous -- I'm going to give San Andreas a 4 out of 10. That's on account of some impressive special effects work, and the fact that as terrible as the script is, it doesn't devolve into the kind of non-stop chaos that too many current big summer movies resort to. The film is at least watchable in some basic sense.
Now, to the story: I described the plot of this movie -- before seeing it -- to a friend and I'd say I got 80% of the details correct. That's how formulaic and predictable these kind of movies have become: the family patriarch will rescue his beautiful family while the world burns around them; we end with their triumphant reunion, somehow along the way forgetting that, you know, millions of people have died so the good fortune of one upper middle class American family isn't really all that potent of a tonic for what we've witnessed.
At its heart, a movie like San Andreas is a kind of ideological propaganda: the supremacy of the all-American nuclear family over any chaos the world can throw at it. This film mixes in a strong dose of patriotism (from Dwayne Johnson's heroic status as an Afghan War veteran, to the unfurling of the American flag from the broken Golden Gate bridge at the end) to supplement this family-over-all message.
However, the problem here is that Johnson's Ray Gaines actions are not patriotic. Far from it, they are a grave dereliction of duty. As a Los Angeles Fire Department rescue helicopter pilot, his job is to serve the greater good. Instead he selfishly rescues his estranged wife from the tony penthouse restaurant where she was having lunch, and then, even worse, the two of them head to San Francisco (in an LAFD helicopter!) to save their daughter.
It should go without saying that a Los Angeles fireman's first job is to assist Los Angelenos in the aftermath of a 9.1 Southern California earthquake, not to steal one of our taxpayer-bought helicopters and fly it to San Francisco. (I would have loved to have been in the writers' room when they hammered this plot point out.)
Indeed, the essence of "patriotism" should be that Ray trusts San Francisco firefighters to stay on duty and do their job, while he does the same in Los Angeles. If every firefighter in California behaved like Ray Gaines, no one would be rescued because all the firetrucks and helicopters would have been racing across the state to various colleges to rescue (exceptionally well-endowed) daughters.
I'd like to see a movie about the thousands of people who died in East Los Angeles while Ray was flying north up the Central Valley for several hours.
It's funny -- on the way into San Andreas I heard the guy in front of me say, about Mad Max: Fury Road, "I wasn't too impressed... it was more of a political, women's empowerment kind of thing." How many people come out of San Andreas and recognize that it is even more political than the Mad Max film? The difference is that this is a propaganda film for all-American values (patriarchy, family, physical work -- i.e. the latter is contrasted with the step-father, a designer or architect, who is shown to be morally repugnant), while Mad Max has a message that subverts and provokes those assumed values. I dunno -- I'm not very political but it seems pretty funny to me that only the subversive film is recognized as being ideological. Think about it.
Great special effects, though!
Now, to the story: I described the plot of this movie -- before seeing it -- to a friend and I'd say I got 80% of the details correct. That's how formulaic and predictable these kind of movies have become: the family patriarch will rescue his beautiful family while the world burns around them; we end with their triumphant reunion, somehow along the way forgetting that, you know, millions of people have died so the good fortune of one upper middle class American family isn't really all that potent of a tonic for what we've witnessed.
At its heart, a movie like San Andreas is a kind of ideological propaganda: the supremacy of the all-American nuclear family over any chaos the world can throw at it. This film mixes in a strong dose of patriotism (from Dwayne Johnson's heroic status as an Afghan War veteran, to the unfurling of the American flag from the broken Golden Gate bridge at the end) to supplement this family-over-all message.
However, the problem here is that Johnson's Ray Gaines actions are not patriotic. Far from it, they are a grave dereliction of duty. As a Los Angeles Fire Department rescue helicopter pilot, his job is to serve the greater good. Instead he selfishly rescues his estranged wife from the tony penthouse restaurant where she was having lunch, and then, even worse, the two of them head to San Francisco (in an LAFD helicopter!) to save their daughter.
It should go without saying that a Los Angeles fireman's first job is to assist Los Angelenos in the aftermath of a 9.1 Southern California earthquake, not to steal one of our taxpayer-bought helicopters and fly it to San Francisco. (I would have loved to have been in the writers' room when they hammered this plot point out.)
Indeed, the essence of "patriotism" should be that Ray trusts San Francisco firefighters to stay on duty and do their job, while he does the same in Los Angeles. If every firefighter in California behaved like Ray Gaines, no one would be rescued because all the firetrucks and helicopters would have been racing across the state to various colleges to rescue (exceptionally well-endowed) daughters.
I'd like to see a movie about the thousands of people who died in East Los Angeles while Ray was flying north up the Central Valley for several hours.
It's funny -- on the way into San Andreas I heard the guy in front of me say, about Mad Max: Fury Road, "I wasn't too impressed... it was more of a political, women's empowerment kind of thing." How many people come out of San Andreas and recognize that it is even more political than the Mad Max film? The difference is that this is a propaganda film for all-American values (patriarchy, family, physical work -- i.e. the latter is contrasted with the step-father, a designer or architect, who is shown to be morally repugnant), while Mad Max has a message that subverts and provokes those assumed values. I dunno -- I'm not very political but it seems pretty funny to me that only the subversive film is recognized as being ideological. Think about it.
Great special effects, though!