Magnitudo 10.5

Taped it, since I had my doubts beforehand. Good thing too. Just zapping the ads out knocked about 45 minutes off the 4 hour run time. Fast forwarding through some of the drek knocked another hour off.

The science was retarded. If their stupid little idea of nukes would have had half a chance of doing what they said it was doing, it would have required hundreds of them, not 6, and they would have had to been thousands of feet under ground, not hundreds. I don't know why I should be bothered about that as it makes as much sense as arguing the "science" in Star Trek.

Phones that still worked when convenient to the "plot".

It had every cliche known to man and monkey. "Marshal Law" (Is that Jude Law's brother?)

I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 because the little bit of footage they had of things falling down was done pretty well.

They had a preview screening of this for my office. I work with a bunch of seismologists, and the overall consensus was that when it came to the science, they got *everything* wrong. The room was full of people laughing uproariously at one howler after another. The special effects were pretty good, but the acting was kind of hard to take. Too melodramatic. And not just the science was wrong. The bit that kind of summed it up was a scene where a TV news report was showing a banner that the President had declared 'marshal law'. Don't the writers have a dictionary? Anyway, if you like bad disaster movies, this is entertaining. But it's pure fantasy, and not at all an accurate portrayal.

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")

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 *****

I have seen this movie once, but I just don't understand how any of the things that happen in the movie are physically possible, because they probably aren't. Let's see, there is a 7.9 Earthquake in Seattle, a man happens to be able to perform stunts while riding a bike down the streets and tries to out run the Space Needle and also manages to stay on his bike and ride it like there is no shaking at all. But this is only the beginning of the unrealistic stuff you see in the film. Later in Reading, California an 8.4 Earthquake occurs and a rift opens up into the ground and you also see a train. Now instead of having the hole open up and swallow the train right there, they decide to use a even funnier method and have it exactly parallel with the tracks then eventually have gravity pull the train in, also you might probably notice that the train is going the exact same speed as the earthquake to. Later in San Francisco a 9.2 Earthquake occurs causing the Golden Gate bride to collapse and what do you see, people standing up and running. If a 8.0 earthquake occurred in real life people would be immediately thrown from the ground. But the height of the unrealistic story plot is when the 10.5 earthquake hits, and practically destroys everything in California, but everything around the state is almost completely unharmed how do you explain this. Even tough they didn't do a good job with the realism it is kind of fun to watch and the science isn't as bad as the movie science in Core.