The premise of San Andreas is pretty simple: the shifting
of the San Andreas Fault causes a massive, vicious earthquake across western
USA, and Chief Ray Gaines (Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson), a search-and-rescue
helicopter pilot for the Los Angeles Fire Department, has to fly amidst all the
chaos and destruction to rescue his teenage daughter (unbelievably played by 29-year-old
Alexandra Daddario) and estranged wife (Carla Gugino).
San Andreas has a good amount of action and excitement as a solid disaster
movie. But that’s all it is. It doesn’t have much depth, originality, and surprise. There’s some attempt to add a bit more drama unrelated
to the disaster aspect, but the execution isn’t good enough to actually add
something interesting. The story is dumb
and cheesy.
It’s also burdened with a couple of
uninteresting or needless characters. Good
thing that Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson is headlining this, as he injects his
magnetic personality into this movie. So
there’s at least one character – the Rock’s character, Ray Gaines – that I was
able to easily root for (though I kind of hate that he has to abandon his duty as
a LAFD rescuer so that he can go after his family); having him is somewhat
enough to be kept invested on the narrative until the end.
San Andreas is not a great movie.
But nobody was expecting it to be one anyway. It just needs to entertain as a standard popcorn
flick. And the spectacular visuals and the
Rock – a charismatic, badass action hero – ensure that it does.
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