tek's rating:

Volcano (PG-13)
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This came out in 1997 (the same year as a rival volcano movie, "Dante's Peak", which I've never seen). I saw this movie on VHS sometime in the late 90s, but by the time I watched it again on Hulu in 2024, I didn't remember any details about it. I liked it, but it's not something I feel the need to ever see a third time.

So, there's an earthquake in Los Angeles. Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones), the director of the city's Office of Emergency Management, comes into work to deal with it, despite being on vacation. I guess he's divorced, and his daughter Kelly (Gaby Hoffmann) is staying with him for the week. Mike meets a seismologist named Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche), who believes a volcano may be forming, but she has no concrete evidence to support this, so Mike doesn't take her all that seriously. That night, she and her assistant Rachel go underground looking for evidence, and a fissure opens, killing Rachel. Throughout the night, the volcanic activity in the city increases, and Mike takes charge of trying to stop the spread of lava. He gets help on the scene from Amy, and is in frequent contact with his assistant director back at OEM, Emmit Reese (Don Cheadle), who directs activity of various agencies from the office.

There are some other important characters, including a doctor named Jaye Calder (Jacqueline Kim), the chairman of the LA MTA Stan Olber (John Carroll Lynch), a number of cops including Lt. Ed Fox (Keith David), and Jaye's husband, a businessman named Norman (John Corbett). And... I don't want to spoil any more of the plot or anything. I will say I'm not a huge fan of disaster movies, and this one was probably pretty unrealistic. But it was exciting and scary and whatnot. It was a decent story, which I'm glad to have re-watched to refresh my memory. I liked the main characters. Still, I couldn't enjoy it too much, just because it's not one of my preferred genres, I guess.


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