If you’ve witnessed the trailers and TV spots of The Rock racing a boat up the face of a tsunami, or weaving a helicopter in between the wreckage of collapsing skyscrapers, and thought to yourself, “I am so on board with this,” then San Andreas delivers. It is exactly as advertised. This is not a showcase for nuanced characters, for a unique or even all that interesting plot, or for any modicum of subtlety. This is Dwayne Johnson fighting an earthquake.
It’s also a gleefully epic blast. The story is simple enough: Ray (Rock) is a Los Angeles Search and Rescue stud with more than 600 saves under his belt—though he is, ever so humbly, just doing his “job.” When an earthquake is unleashed seemingly from the bowels of Hell—like biblical, wrath of god, Godzilla-level earth shaking—he drops everything, and the lives of everyone, in order to save his estranged wife, Emma (Carla Gugino), and daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario). Some other things happen, of course, but they don’t matter.
Carlton Cuse’s (Lost and Bates Motel) first screenplay for a feature film tries to inject more life into the disaster movie formula, but it basically just adds plot threads that lead nowhere and dramatic happenings that only take up precious time between massive bouts of chaos. Paul Giamatti plays a seismologist who, just in time to be totally useless, develops a new, apparently foolproof way of predicting earthquakes. He exists to say ominous things and give people warning that they’re about to be slaughtered wholesale by Mother Nature. Emma has a turd of a new boyfriend (Ioan Gruffud); Blake runs into a charming British guy and his kid brother, both of whom she has to help survive (she apparently takes after dear old dad); and, for some reason, Emma and Ray also have a dead daughter—all of it totally inconsequential window dressing, just moments of respite before director Brad Peyton stuffs more madness in your eyes.
What San Andreas is—and what it shines as—is a continual, cinematically brazen escalation of cacophony. In every instance, the action is cranked up. It’s not enough that there’s a massive earthquake—the skyscraper you’re standing on collapses beneath you. And then … boom, now there’s fire. The movie seems to, at every moment, ask itself: “This situation is bad, but what would be worse?” San Andreas is all ludicrous stacking, and before long Ray is skydiving out of a pilotless plane, buildings are knocking each other over like bowling pins, and random extras are being crushed by falling debris.