Volcano - Heisser als die Hölle

A blockbuster with a colossal budget of $90 million according to IMDb, but everything rhymes with cheapness: the dialog, the script, the plot twists, the soundtrack, ... It looks like a tv movie we may watch during a rainy Saturday afternoon, with a bad cold.

Despite a history of major geological events in the area, nobody really suspects anything when a handful of pipe engineers die from intense burns while underground. Investigating the accident, OEM chief Mike Roark almost gets killed himself when an underground fissure throws up intense heat and flame. Expert Dr Amy Barnes believes that magma may be coming up to the surface of the earth and causing the events but, would you believe it, nobody buys it. Nobody that is, until the tar pits overflow and start to pour lava onto the streets, destroying everything in its path. With Roark convinced and Barnes wishing she had been wrong, the race is on to protect the city.

Better known as 'that other volcano movie of 1997', this film gets out the disaster movie handbook and follows it step by step. So we have a manly and practical hero, an expert, children and pets in peril, human conflict, sacrifice, special effects, 'bad' politicians etc etc. So far so formula, and so it all continues. The basic set up does the usual things by setting up the most basic of characters for us to use as a focus before then just letting the lava go and relying on special effects to do the rest. The need to turn the drama into a specific story around Roark means that it occasionally forces him and his into unlikely dangerous positions that require them to be inches away from the action; this is not convincing and at times just feels like overkill, sucking any real tension out of the film.

Without much real excitement the film just piles on the special effects and, unfortunately, these look dated with some poor back projection failing to really cut the mustard.

The film soldiers on, unsure of how it can keep raising the stakes while remaining plausible (it doesn't!) and it will satisfy those just looking for a noisy disaster movie but no more than the clichés that those produce. The script has a few digs at LA (the news reporting, the pet obsession etc) but these don't amount to much but it works much better than the rather sickening attempts at racial commenting in the final few scenes ('everyone looks the same' – ugh!). The cast try hard to convince us that they are real people in real danger but even the talent involved cannot do much more than put on grim faces and soldier on. Jones is a good lead because he has a solid presence, but even he cannot make it exciting when he is placed within inches of anything falling/burning/exploding. Heche simply fits into the 'I hate it when I'm right' expert without really bringing more than competence to the role, while Hoffmann simply tries to find trouble to get into anytime the film dips. Cheadle is good support but minor subplots featuring the likes of David, Corbett and Rispoli only serve to highlight that the film cannot even manage to do the disaster movie stable of having each character have a background to make us care.

Overall this is an average disaster movie at best and, as such, will only really play well to those that like that sort of thing. The script is weak and cannot wait until the lava flows but even then struggles to make it exciting, throwing specific near misses at us again and again to keep us interesting. The cast have nothing to work with and make little impression but viewers may find this has just enough going for it to make it watchable if totally forgettable.

I loved the 90's resurgence of the Disaster movie that was cemented as a Genre back in the 1970's but like a Volcano that genre laid dormant for a long time until the 90's exploded with huge, big budget Disaster films with the likes of VOLCANO, DANTE'S PEAK, TWISTER, INDEPENDENCE DAY, DEEP IMPACT, ARMAGEDDON, DAYLIGHT & even JURASSIC PARK could be considered a Disaster movie!!! There's probably more that i haven't mentioned but those were the "Big Ones" & i consider Dante's Peak & Volcano the very best of the bunch. I've always been a big Tommy Lee Jones fan after The Fugitive & Men In Black & U.S Marshalls, Batman Forever, Under Seige, among others as the 90's were his glory days as a star & here he gets his own big budget summertime Blockbuster with his name written big above the title on the poster, this is his film & he's the main star lead of the whole damn thing & he's excellent as our rugged hero lead as he runs about Los Angeles trying to rescue everyone & save the city from a big erupted Volcano spilling out a river of scorching hot lava, Tommy is great & i love his voice & his smart authoritative manner & he puts it all to good use here. There's a nice ensemble cast to round out the supporting characters with Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffman, Don Cheadle & Keith David. I totally love the Thrilling & exciting music score by the legendary ALAN SILVESTRI (Predator 1&2, Judgment Night, Death Becomes Her, Back to the Future & so many more) & the look of the sticky hot summertime LA is captured beautifully on screen & i loved the opening of the movie just showing LA in the morning with everyone going about their day as usual & busyness of it all with not knowing what's growing under the famous city, it's just an exciting & lovely 90's opening especially with the music. The special effects still hold up beautifully & the production design is perfect for a Disaster movie & the most important thing for this big budget popcorn movie is it's simply FUN & full of entertainment. As the City of Angeles starts to crumble & the lava flows through the streets we follow Tommy Lee Jones on his mission to save it all if he can & it's a thrilling & fun experience, i love 90's movies. My favourite Tommy Lee Jones "Vehicle" movie

BAD NEWS - Unlikeable female lead in Anne Hesch, who had too foul a mouth for me. Other irritating characters with stupid dialog. A predictable ending with the needlessly drawn out save-the-daughter scene trying for maximum suspense.

GOOD NEWS - Some awesome disaster scenes. Hollywood's special-effects just keep getting more awesome as the years go on. A fast-moving story that was just about the right length. A likable lead character played by Tommy Lee Jones.

Overall, a movie that keeps your attention but doesn't get your respect with the dumb dialog.

As a Big Budget movie, I'm sure that "Volcano" took more than a few months to make. Too bad someone associated with the movie didn't take that time to wander into the local library (the children's section, perhaps), and check out a book on "Volcanoes". I've seen Saturday-morning cartoons that have a better understanding of lava.

Instead we get many scenes of outright stupidity that would challenge even the densest of viewers. In one scene, Tommy Lee Jones and an assistant are standing near a volcanic vent, and their protective suits start to melt (of course skin is stronger than a protective suit, so they escape unharmed). But in numerous later scenes, people walk by lava like you might walk past a lake. Maybe this is because no one seems to know it's lava. I lost count of how many times a character said something like "What is that stuff?" or "There's something really hot and glowing coming down the street, and things are melting into it. Wonder what it could be?"

In what has to be one of the worst scenes ever filmed, two characters load an injured man onto the outstretched ladder of a hook & ladder truck. Then they hang onto a dangling fire hose as the ladder is lifted above the lava. The heat is so intense that the fire hose SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTS, but our characters are unhurt (their boots smoke a little). I didn't know that fire hoses were so flammable...

But "Volcano"is not just a dumb disaster flick with bad science. No! It's also a Socially-Important Commentary on our Society Movie! Throughout the film there are numerous "social messages". These are so corny and contrived that they could only have been written by people who have never actually experienced them. A racist cop tries to arrest a guy for assault (in the middle of a disaster scene!), but then the two team up to help save the day. Aww. Later, a little kid notes that "everybody looks the same" when covered by ash and soot. Aww. America's racial troubles could be ended, if only a giant volcano threatened us all.

More? Oh sure, there's more! Tommy Lee Jones is the too-hard-working dad who comes to value his daughter. Said daughter is a selfish brat who learns some responsibility, and respect for her dad. There's a guy whose only role in the movie is to say obviously insulting things. This makes him the "bad guy". One can see the writers of this movie hammering his role out: "We need someone who's rich and yuppie-like and snooty. Someone like us, only not as enlightened. Someone who wouldn't make a Socially-Important Commentary on our Society Movie like we are!" Of course, bad things happen to him and all is right with the world.

In the end, the mysterious, glowing, sometimes-hot substance we come to know as "lava" is channeled into the sea, and all of LA lives happily ever after in a just and fair world. A world, of course, with a big smoking volcano plopped down into the middle of it. Certainly that won't affect the real estate values?

The lessons of this movie are quite clear. 1) lava is harmless if you don't touch it; 2) small children will inevitably wander into incredible harm (but emerge OK), and 3) only through the trauma of sudden volcanic activity will we come to appreciate the true Brotherhood of Man.

Whoever thought up this movie should be thrown into a volcano...