Volcano

with Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann
Directed by Mick Jackson
Written by Jerome Armstrong
by Scott Hefflon

Despite certain faults (pun not intended), I’ll take Volcano over Dante’s Peak any day. In both movies, all the action centers around your male hero and your female leader-cum-heroine. While Pierce Brosnan was dashing, quick-thinking, and all that, he ain’t much of a Bond, nor is he cut out to be an action hero. It’s like casting Steven Seagal as a ladies man. It just ain’t plausible. While Tommy Lee Jones is hardly Jackie Chan, the man gives power to a character. You feel your life is in good hands when the man’s on the scene. And seeing as how he’s chief at the Office of Emergency Management, he’s found his vocation. And where Linda Hamilton was a mother/politician, Anne Heche is a cutie-pie scientist who takes some personal risks to prove her theories. Mostly, I’ve just never been able to look at “frumpy” Hamilton since she was the buff bitch psycho-goddess in T2. In both Volcano and Dante’s Peak, everyone around the two male/female teams is an expendable sounding board you only get to know and like so when they get fried you feel bad. Each also had an almost identical “Doubting Thomas sacrifices him/herself for the sake of others.” In Dante’s, it was the proud, bull-headed grandmother who’d made her loved ones come and get her stupid ass. She jumped into a lava-covered lake to drag to shore the rapidly-sinking boat filled with those same loved ones. In Volcano, it was the subway director who didn’t stop the trains from running until it was too late. He carried the unconscious driver of the flame-engulfed train despite his melting shoes, then leapt into a pool of lava, throwing the driver to safety. Lots of other people died too, but we’re supposed to be especially moved by these two sacrifices. And we are.

Sure, Dante’s had a beautiful mountain, but Volcano has fireballs and whole city blocks getting destroyed. Dante’s had the advantage of knowing where the lava was going: downhill. Volcano has the suspense of trying to anticipate what neighborhood is going to get wiped out next, and how are they going to redirect the catastrophe, thus saving the lives of more people than live in the entire state of Colorado. Both movies had the clucking of politicians, but so does every movie. Volcano has a neurotic daughter who can’t be left alone, much the same as in Heat (what are we doing to our kids?). It also has the token African-American (Don Cheadle, also in Rosewood), Asian-American (Jacqui Kim, who plays both doctor-who-saves-the-day and girlfriend-of-the-self-centered-prick-whose-building-gets-blown-up), and dog (much like Speed 2: Cruise Control and Twister). Dante’s doesn’t get the equal opportunity award because, unlike Los Angeles, a veritable melting pot (excuse the pun), Colorado’s mostly white folks. In summary, from the safety of the theater or our comfy couches, many of us have to ask ourselves, “Waitaminute. These people live on a mountain. Those people live on a fault line. And we’re supposed to be shocked and surprised when nature kicks their helpless asses? Move, morons!”