Magnitude 10.5

After two successive earthquakes, the scientist Dr. Samantha Hill (Kim Delaney) claims that it is not an aftershock, but a rupture and displacement of the plate tectonics. She advises that other earthquakes would happen. When her prediction happens, Roy Nolan (Fred Ward), the assessor of the American President Paul Hollister (Beau Bridges), gives all the support Dr. Hill needs to reduce the casualties in the affected cities. "10.5" is a totally predictable movie, full of clichés and terrible dialogs. There is one specific character (Amanda Williams, played by Kaley Cuoco, in the role of the daughter of Gov. Carla Williams (Rebecca Jenkins)) that irritated me, since her lines were very silly and even stupid. Most of the dramatic situations are shallow, such as the Afro-American doctor who argues with his wife, because he bought a Porsche instead of a new house for the family. However, the guy leaves his expensive car in the city that is being evacuated instead of using it for escaping. I could point out many other ridiculous situations, but it is not the objective of my review. I regret that a movie, having a reasonable budget, good cast and a very updated theme, has had such a bad screenplay and direction. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "10.5 – O Dia Que a Terra Não Aguentou" ("10.5 – The Day Earth Has Not Resisted")

... so I'm being more than generous for the cinematography, sound, and special effects (they do give out Oscars for these after all) and raising it to 3/10, and still I'm feeling very generous given it is neither Christmas nor my birthday. I thought this thing had been embarrassingly and quietly buried by the networks a decade ago, and there it was today on a cable channel! That I actually pay for! This thing is a camp classic that seems to aspire to be something in the vein of "Independence Day", except this film does not have Will Smith and manages to make that 1996 film look like Citizen Kane in comparison.

A bunch of earthquakes strike up and down the west coast making Dr. Samantha Hill (Kim Delaney), "an intellectual earthquake expert" - do they actually give out such degrees and job titles? - believe that there is an even bigger earthquake coming. She manages to keep a straight face spouting lines like "These are not from our fault. They are from the faults affected by our fault." Hey this dialogue is somebody's fault! She predicts a "big one" will come and lop off a piece of the entire west coast UNLESS...they follow her cunning plan. Of course this involves nuclear warheads planted all along the west coast and therefore a massive migration away from the west coast for everybody. And we must have a tent hospital with lots of doctors out in the desert encampments being forced to make life and death decisions, acting like they have never had to do this before. Are these guys all podiatrists or something? But I digress.

This thing drags on for four hours so we need lots of interpersonal relationships that need healing, including a father/daughter pair that I didn't recognize until today. Hey, that's Kaley Cuoco as the daughter when she was only 17, three years before "Big Bang Theory", here in a film in the tradition of Irwin Allen, who ironically believed in the theory that any film with a big enough bang is worthwhile entertainment! Oh, and then there is Jeff Bridges as the president, who proves he still has that common touch by playing basketball with Fred Ward's character, who although he is the FEMA director, actually gets his hands dirty in the disaster. Oh well, at least he wasn't at some horse show at the time. See Hurricane Katrina and FEMA director Michael Brown for reference.

Well after four hours of sitting through this I will tell you that "the movie ends with a big explosion". It would have to, else there is really no payoff. I'm going to make you sit through the entire thing to learn anything more. If you must. Not recommended for anything but beer bong or drinking game enhanced laughter.

I pray this isn't the future of TV drama. I had to laugh at the opening scene where a guy on a bike manages to dodge every piece of falling debris, including the entire Seattle Tower. Maybe after that it turns into a decent suspense movie, I can't tell because the quick cuts and jerky in-and-out zooming is not only distracting me from what the characters are saying, it is physically making me nauseous and I have to turn it off. They don't pull off the attempt at the NYPD-Blue (maybe it was Kim Delaney's idea?) camcorder style. It's like watching Cribs on MTV, not one shot is long enough for you to see what is going on. It's just frustrating and annoying. This movie should be shown to film classes as an example of what NOT to do.

This isn't really worthy of a serious review, being just the worst kind of TV movie dreck that it is possible to conjure. Anybody that rated this higher than a 5 needs professional help at once. Instead, here's what this movie will teach really dumb people (the ones who rated it 5+)...

1. The best way to avoid a collapsing building in an earthquake is to ride a BMX bike directly away from, but in the fall line of, the said building. You should also resist the temptation to avoid being crushed to a pulp by the simple expedient of turning down a side street as that would imply rational thought on your part (and we all know BMX'ers have no brains).

2. Earthquakes will form cracks in the ground that will chase a train exactly along the route of its tracks, even going around corners in order to follow the track exactly. Or maybe the track actually held the faultline together....

3. The above-mentioned cracks are so smart that, once they have succeeded in catching and engulfing the train, they will immediately stop opening up at once, literally the moment the engine goes down into the abyss.

4. Everyone in an earthquake will have to overcome some kind of personal /familial/professional problem.

5. An entire town can be swallowed without the slightest trace remaining.

6. A full-grown man will succumb to poisonous fumes far more quickly than a woman half (or less) his body mass.

7. The answer to stopping earthquakes is to detonate multiple nuclear warheads beneath the surface of the earth in the conceit that it will fuse a faultline together.

8. Disaster control centres have map displays that depict nuclear explosions as tiny, superimposed balls of fire. I kid you not...

9. The careers of Beau Bridges and Fred Ward are at an end. No! Wait! This bit is actually a fact. I wonder how galling it is to poor old Beau that his father and brother are/were much more successful than he is/was/will ever be.

10. After the big quake is over, people will shuffle mindlessly forward in an unintentional parody of Day of the Dead.

In fact, there really is only one thing to redeem this movie (at least in some tiny way) and that is the miniature and CGI effects of destruction. They are pretty obviously what they are - mini or CGI - but they are by far the most interesting thing in this otherwise diabolically awful excuse of a film.

Elsewise all the film contains (Apart from the already mentioned points above) is awful shaky-cam footage (it makes it look more realistic you know!), ironing-board acting, ludicrous science-abuse, characters so stereotypical and clichéd that you wonder if they were available "off-the-shelf", terribly over-the-top melodramatic music which is actually laughably awful in most scenes and let's not forget the Hulk-like split-imaging which at times makes the whole thing look like the opening credits of Dallas!

Oh my! This is a real stinker! Avoid this like it was a real earthquake! Unless you want a huge, huge laugh at the dumbness of it all.

It was obvious in the opening credit sequence that "10.5" was going to be one doozy of a stinker. The cyclist outracing the collapsing Space Needle - how contrived, how ridiculous, how utterly physically impossible to ride a bicycle during an earthquake so tremendous.

This movie is so bad, it "MST's" itself!

There are so many gaps in logic, fact and production, it's impossible to keep up with them. Cheesy "effects" (that train was soooo obviously a model!), preposterous plot, lousy continuity and terrible timing (yeah, right - Science Chick and Doubting Guy DRIVE from LA to Redding and back in the same afternoon and, oh yeah, neither one of them gets dirty...). However, my absolute favorite gaffe in the movie comes in the first minutes of Part 2, in which a newscaster is detailing the arrival of troops in San Franciso. Across the bottom of the "news crawler" is the phrase "Marshal Law". What, did Marshal Faulk and Ty Law have a baby? When the military takes over local control, kids, it's called MARTIAL Law!! The fact that the editorial and production teams did not catch this simple error is, to me, indicative of their overall approach to this, ah, er, um, film. It seems painfully obvious that the entire company - actors, writers, gaffers, prop masters, everyone - have no respect for the movie they're making.

It is a great mystery how a bit of dreck such as this can get made, especially by network television, which is notoriously conservative. Rank this turd up there with "Atomic Train" and "Tidal Wave" - the only thing missing from "10.5" is an impassioned performance from Corbin Bernson.

A rank pile o' poo, but so much fun to watch! 1/2* out of *****