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Volcano (film)
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Volcano is a 1997 disaster-action film starring Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, and Don Cheadle. It was directed by Mick Jackson, and was released in the United States on April 25, 1997, just months after the release of Dante's Peak, another film about a volcano acclaimed as being more scientifically accurate. Volcano was filmed in various locations in California, including the Mojave Desert, the city of Torrance, and the Beverly Center.
Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) is a divorced Los Angeles emergency official.
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Encyclopedia
Volcano is a 1997 disaster-action film starring Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, and Don Cheadle. It was directed by Mick Jackson, and was released in the United States on April 25, 1997, just months after the release of Dante's Peak, another film about a volcano acclaimed as being more scientifically accurate. Volcano was filmed in various locations in California, including the Mojave Desert, the city of Torrance, and the Beverly Center.
Plot
Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) is a divorced Los Angeles emergency official. One day, violent bursts of seismic activity are felt.
When Mike arrives at the scene at MacArthur Park where underground workers are mysteriously burned (seven dead, one critical), he heads underground with Gator Harris (Michael Rispoli) while staying in contact with Emmit Reese (Don Cheadle) until it gets hot underground. After barely escaping, Mike has Emmit send for a geologist to investigate. Thus, geologists Amy Barnes (Anne Heche) and Rachel (Laurie Lathem) arrive to investigate and claim that a volcano is going to form. Mike also tries to get the Metro Subway chairman Stan Olber (John Carroll Lynch) not to run any subways under the Red Line Tunnel until further notice, but Stan declines. At the La Brea Tar Pits, the statues begin to slowly sink.
Soon, a massive earthquake strikes the city, causing a power outage and stranding a subway train in the Red Line Tunnel. Amy loses Rachel when she falls into a chasm filled with fire. Mike and his daughter Kelly (Gaby Hoffmann) go to the epicenter, at the La Brea Tar Pits to investigate and encounter steam geysers bursting from sewer openings.
Eventually, a stratovolcano begins to emerge in the largest tar pit.Kelly is told to wait in mikes car. Just then the lava flow heads towards the car. she gets out and mike shows up to save Kelly,just as the car is set on fire by the lava.mike ,with Kelly in his hands turns back to watch his car melt in molten lava. Kelly is injured with a second degree burn and a doctor named Jaye Calder (Jacqueline Kim) is recruited to help her. In the next sequence, oozing lava from the new volcano flows down Wilshire Boulevard, destroying the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as Metro Subway stations, malls, museums, houses, and cars.
In the Red Line Tunnel, a subway train is consumed just as its passengers abandon the vehicle. Stan has led a team to rescue the stranded people, but is melted when he saves the driver of the subway.
To stop the flow of lava, the city, led by Mike, Amy, an L.A. Fire Chief (Bert Kramer) and Police Lt. Ed Fox (Keith David), stacks eighty-two concrete Jersey barriers to create a cul-de-sac. As the lava pools, the fire department attempts to cool it with water with assistance from helicopters dumping water on it. The operation is a success but when Amy probes the subway tunnels, it is revealed that a vast magma chamber has opened, unleashing a new, more dangerous torrent of lava.
Despite placing himself and his teenage daughter in danger, Mike plans to divert the new, underground river of lava into the existing concrete drainage channel of Ballona Creek where it would drain harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean. Before the plan can be implemented, Amy points out that San Vicente Boulevard does not slope in the direction the plan requires. It would instead direct the molten river toward the Cedars Sinai Hospital. Demolition teams are called in to gouge a channel through the street and adjacent Beverly Center.
Before this second plan can be implemented, the lava hits the end of the Red Line subway tunnel and erupts out of the intersection next to the hospital. In a last-ditch effort to stop the flow, the 22-story Beverly Heights condominium tower is hastily imploded, the wall of debris channeling the lava into the channel and out to sea. Mike and Kelly leave to "head home".
In the final scene, it shows Mt. Wilshire as the following words appear on the screen:
- C.I.G.S. Volcano Databank
- Name: Mount Wilshire
- Location: Los Angeles, California
- Status: ACTIVE
Cast
Scientific Integrity
The premise for the movie is loosely based on the sudden appearance of Parícutin, a volcano which emerged from a farmer's field in Mexico. The depiction of the behavior of Mt. Wilshire and its lava is highly fictionalized. Such a type of stratovolcano is exceedingly unlikely to form anywhere in Southern California because the closest tectonic plate junction to the area is the San Andreas Fault System, which is a transform fault (where two plates slide past each other), and not a convergent boundary, where one plate slides under another, and molten rock is more likely to reach the surface.
The lava depicted in film alternates between rapid and slow motion, as well as levels of liquidity, as the plot dictates, and performs behaviors (such as oozing or geysers) common to several different types of volcano, but rarely found together from one vent. Additionally, the path of the lava taken in the film is also constructed from convenience to the story, as opposed to actual geologic or geographic likelihood.
Reception
Roger Ebert gave the film 1.5/4 stars writing "This is a surprisingly cheesy disaster epic." Mike LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle says, "It can't make us care", and Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle describes the film as "an embarrassment, albeit one of the so-bad-it's-kinda-good variety" giving it 1.5/5 stars. On RottenTomatoes.com Volcano has a rating of 35%, classifying it as "rotten".
Volcano was released to 2,774 screens on April 25, 1997 and grossed $14.58 million on its opening weekend. Domestically the film grossed $47.47 million and $72.6 million at the foreign box office, bringing its world wide total to about $120.1 million. These totals were significantly lower than the $178 million world wide gross of Volcanos competitor with a similar plot Dante's Peak which opened in February 1997, just two months prior to Volcano. Comparing the two films, Marc Savlov says, "While Dante's Peak at least offered some sort of glimpse into the geological workings of volcanoes and the men and women who study them, Volcano dispenses entirely with the intellect and goes straight for the guts".
Volcano was nominated for, but did not win, the 1997 Razzie Award for "Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property".
Availability
Volcano was released on VHS on November 18, 1997. The film was subsequently released on DVD on March 9, 1998.
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