Magnitude 10.5

... 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.

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")

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.