Review of Volcano (1997) by Filipeneto — 22 Aug 2018
American cinema loves to destroy things, the bigger the better. In this case, the thing to be destroyed is Los Angeles, with a huge volcano rising right in the middle of the city. Its a very traditional disaster film, true to its genre, in which the improvised hero saves the day with total heroism, in a situation off total despair.
The only two real characters here are the Volcano and the City because no character is truly developed, not even the hero. They are faces, people who do things. Sometimes they're there just to scream hysterically, be scared, to die, to show cowardice or to create situations in which the hero will shine.
Because of this, the work of the actors is just OK, including Tommy Lee Jones. It would be impossible for any actor to shine with such empty characters. The strongest part of the film are the action scenes, stuffed with special effects.
Some are so far-fetched that we're forced to think that guy should be on the luckiest day of his life to survive in that unbelievable way. But anyone who is expecting a CGI show will be disappointed: they're not always good and seem a bit dated in the eyes of the current audience.
But it's a 1997 movie... everything has its time and, of course, with today's technological breakthroughs, our eyes will not see this movie the same way we watched it twenty years ago. Even so, there are some scenes and sequences where the film is powerful and emanates a pleasant tension that makes us uncomfortable.
Not everything is bad, predictable or cliché.
This review of Volcano (1997) was written by Filipeneto on 22 Aug 2018.
Volcano has generally received mixed reviews.
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