Volcano — Was It Good?
Volcano was a 1997-disaster movie released at a time when audiences were eager to see natural disasters on the big screen. Twister (1996) was a box-office success the year before and studios were looking for ways to capitalize on the volcano with Volcano coming out the same year as Dante’s Peak (1997). It was a race to the first release, much like Armageddon (1998) and Deep Impact (1998) a few years later, and Dante’s Peak went on to become more successful. Volcano went on to make $122 million worldwide, which was reasonable, but failed to make the same returns as other summer blockbusters like Bean, Men in Black and The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
The film follows Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) as director of the Los Angeles Office of Emergency Management. Although on vacation with daughter Kelly (Gaby Hoffman), he comes into work when seven workers are burnt to death when working on a storm drain in MacArthur Park. He teams up with seismologist Amy Barnes (Anne Heche) who believes it to be a volcano forming under the city. She is right, of course, and the volcano begins to erupt in the La Brea tar pits causing chaos in the city. It is a race against time to stop the lava flowing deeper into Los Angeles and causing more deaths.
The movie focuses on different divisions around the city including the subway system, police force and Cedars-Sinai Hospital following the issues they face with an active volcano erupting in LA. Unfortunately, none of the characters representing these departments have a great deal to do and there is little character development.
The best of these subplots comes from the Department of Transport and John Carroll Lynch’s Stan Olber as the head. They are tasked with saving the passengers of a subway train that has been left stranded underground during the eruption of the volcano. The claustrophobia of the scene is suffocating as the passengers gasp for air and the horrific sense of heat is really brought to life. As Stan Olber heroically goes to save the driver, the scene is tense, and we think for a moment he’s done it, but it all ends in a tragic and shocking sacrifice.
On the surface it is a bit more by the numbers. Emergency crews are trying to fight a volcano. There are lava bombs flying about, the liquid-hot rock is edging ever closer to homes and families, and their only plan is to try and stop the flow with vehicles and building material. Tommy Lee Jones is as great in these energetic scenes as the quieter ones. He just gets on with his job and knows he is no superhero. He is just an expert in dealing with emergencies who just needs to be listened to. There could have been a temptation to cast his role younger, but he looks exactly like the kind of guy who would be called on in these situations.
Amidst the carnage and fire there are a few smaller scenes that all disaster movies must have. Predictably, a dog escapes a burning building, the hospital fills up with burn injuries, and there are race tensions between the Black community and the police. There is a scene where a white police officer handcuffs a Black civilian to a truck and only releases him when he realizes they all need to work together to defeat the greater good of Mother Nature. It is pretty ham-fisted and lacks subtlety.
However, at least they tried to convey a message of equality in the nineties. The main way director Mike Jackson does this is in the closing scene where everyone is covered in ash and a little boy is asked to identify his mother by Keith David’s police lieutenant. The boy replies, “I can’t, they all look the same.” I think if Volcano wanted to say something about race, it needs to go back to the writer’s room.
Despite this, the sequences of the lava moving through the city are tense and exciting for the most part. Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche and Don Cheadle, from the Emergency Department Office, trying to formulate plans to stop the flow are interesting and the scene where they must erect a barrier to stop it is great. Even though the lava is moving relatively slow, there is still a sense of time-consciousness and pressure that is felt by these characters.
It is a shame then that the third act feels a little anticlimactic. The lava is being diverted to a building which, when demolished, should push it into the sea. It doesn’t have the excitement of downtown Los Angeles in the second act though. To make matters worse, the film tries to pull on the heartstrings of the audience without investing the character development required. Therefore, when a bomb squad member sacrifices himself to blow up the building and save the city, people just don’t care.
In fact, it just comes off as eye-rolling when a little boy that is being looked after by Roark’s daughter, Kelly, manages to wander into the building about to be denoted to add tension to the scene. It just comes off as annoying and doesn’t work. The film just fizzles out and it feels like it has had enough after all the chaos and excitement of the second act.
On a side note, I remember the marketing for this movie being everywhere. There were pretty amazing posters with the tagline “The Coast is Toast.” A huge erupting volcano in the middle of LA looking like hell had opened up, all red and black and demonic. Funnily enough though when watching the movie, there wasn’t just a massive volcano in the middle of the city like that, but all credit to the marketing team for making it look like a massively appealing disaster movie.
Case For:
Tommy Lee Jones plays the leading role really well. He’s just a man who is good at his job, gets on with it, and doesn’t need to be sexed up. It could have been really easy to get an actor like Brad Pitt to play his role. It’s true that the people called to help in these emergency situations are experts in the field and not superheroes.
The actual scenes where the volcano is spurting copious amount of lava in downtown LA is exciting and tense. The lava may be moving slow but there is a real pressure on the residents and officials alike.
The subway scene is brilliant and horrifying in equal measure. The sense of heat from being underground during a volcano is brought to life and is sticky, uncomfortable, and claustrophobic.
Case Against:
Besides Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche, none of the supporting cast are given a great deal to do and there is little character development.
The film fizzles out like the eponymous volcano, and it feels like a bit of a tacked-on third act after the excitement of downtown Los Angeles.
The race politics need work. Volcano lacks the courage in its conviction in what it wants to say. More could have been written in the script and shown on the screen if it wanted to convey a message of equality.
What The Critics Said:
“None of it makes a hell of a lot of sense and the supporting cast are wallpaper thin, but Volcano is at least hot on entertainment.” William Thomas — Empire Magazine
The coast may be toast, but it’s the lava, covering everything like a malevolent tide of melted butter, that makes this a disaster picture that’s tastier than usual. Kenneth Turan — Los Angeles Times
Like the substantially better Twister, this film insists on a thunderous, exhausting pace that inevitably becomes deflating. Janet Maslin — New York Times
Conclusion:
There are some issues with Volcano, and I won’t even start to go into the science of the movie, but it’s a lot of fun. The second act is where the real disaster movie comes to life in the downtown LA and subways scenes. If you don’t take it too seriously, I think you’ll have some enjoyment watching it.