Volcano

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Starring	Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffman, Emmit Reese
Director	Mick Jackson
Year	1997
What it's worth		Matinee (Good way to spend a couple of hours.)

It doesn't surprise me that the disaster film is seeing a rebirth in the past couple of years. We no longer have evil empires at our door, and nuclear destruction doesn't loom over us so heavily. People are starting to feel optimistic about our control over ourselves. The thing that can still strike fear in our hearts, though, is nature. We still have no control over our environment, and nature seems determined to remind us of that with ever-increasing frequency.

Volcano, then, is the latest offering from Hollywood to remind us that it's not nice to fool with Mother Nature. And the power of that reminder is the movie's strongest point; more than once, the actors are thunderstruck as they stare at the power of the force before them, and even the most competent characters are left shaking their heads in disbelief, at the complete end of their wits. It's these moments of honesty that ring the most true in the film.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Mike Roark, the director of Los Angeles's emergency management team, which has ultimate control over the city's resources when any manner of emergency strikes. The EMT team is crackerjack; Roark is one of those guys who can handle thirty people screaming for his attention at once with cool efficiency, and his right-hand man, Reese (Don Cheadle) is cut from the same mold. When strange things start happening around MacArthur park, though, the EMT find themselves a little out of the earthquake management league that they're used to. Something different is happening this time, and a sharp-witted, sharp-tongued seismologist, Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche), is the first to suggest the ridiculous; that a volcano is about to erupt right under Los Angeles.

Of course, doomsayers must be proved right in a disaster film, and in this one, both Barnes and Roark end up right in the heart of the explosive appearance of the volcano, Roark with his 13-year-old daughter, Kelly (Gaby Hoffman), in tow. Reese is left at the EMT control room to try to piece together what's happening, convince the rest of the city of it, and when there's no denying it any more, keep the city from falling apart completely.

The story works as long as you're willing to buy the basic, simple premise; that a volcano could suddenly appear below a city with a full-scale eruption. Stranger things have certainly been known to happen in nature, as Dr. Barnes reminds us during the movie. Those of us who live far from Los Angeles get to sit back and enjoy the chaos of watching a city be ripped asunder from below. Those who live a little closer to home may be cheering wildly or shuddering in their seats, depending on how they feel about their hometown.

Acting next to a natural disaster is tough; exactly how many times can you emote against lava, blazing fireballs, and erupting trees? But the cast does a good job of keeping the human touch firm, allowing us to sympathize as they hopscotch around molten rock. Tommy Lee Jones in particular, once again, is stellar as a hard-as-nails guy with a warm heart. He plays virtually the same character as he did in The Fugitive; the story even mentions that he's recently moved from the midwest. Maybe Sam Gerard decided to make a career change after bringing in Richard Kimble?

Volcano's main fault, if you'll pardon the pun, is an easy one to make when you're filming such grand-scale effects and events; the messages and meanings tend to also get out of control and grand-scale as well. The spark of attraction between Roark and Barnes is about as subtle as Hitchcock's famous train in the tunnel (and there's a shot at the end of the movie to nearly rival that), and a racial theme, in particular, gets so heavy-handed it makes it tough to breathe. A racist cop must learn to work with the black man from the neighborhood that's being threatened by the lava, and the conflict is laid out with broad, overpainted strokes. It's really a shame, too, because the much better, much more subtle theme that African-Americans can take pride in is the competence of the black characters in the movie, especially Reese, but that almost gets lost under the over-bearing "can't we all just get along" subplot.

This is definitely our first taste of summer - lots of noise, big effects, and expensive budgets. Check it out when you're in a popcorn-chewing mood and want to go ga-ga over big bangs. Don't expect any intellectual challenges, but it does provide the fun it promises.

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