This movie was again a coincidence as I'm no a huge fan of the genre. In my opinion all these catastrophe movies are kind of the same, the execution and the actors make the difference, but the action is not much different. This is going to change I think, as time passes and technology evolves, or has already, as you can create the unimaginable with AI, but I'm not here to do a technical analysis on special effects. I'd rather just enjoy what I see, if I can and leave the rest to those who are into it. 10.5 was released in 2004, which makes it 22 years old, so you can imagine the difference between this one and those made today :)
An earthquake reaching a 10.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, strikes the west coast of the U.S. and Canada. A large portion of land falls into the ocean, and the situation is worsened by aftershocks and tsunami.
It is a science-fiction movie obviously and if you are not living under the rock and have a bit of knowledge about the world, you know such a quake is kind of impossible. The strongest one was of 9.5 and was is known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, so we have to enjoy the movie and not expect for the events to match reality.
The movie starts the usual way. We get to see Dr. Samantha Hill played by Kim Delaney, a scientist who's researching earthquakes is fighting to prove the initial earthquake and the aftershock, are in fact two earthquakes and that the situation might be way more serious and disastrous than many want to believe.
As it happens in situations like this, no one believes her and most of those holding the power prefer to take a politically safer approach, ignore acknowledging the magnitude of the situation and wait, to avoid panic. The decision is never easy as no one knows for sure what is going to happen and a false alarm can cost you your political career, so Dr. Hill needs all the evidence and help she can get to convince people at the highest level, to finally take action. Things evolve quickly and soon they have no other choice, but to act, if they want to save lives.
What sets this movie apart from the pack is the solution they find in order to avoid the biggest catastrophe. They use nuclear warheads to stop the earthquake and tsunami and save the West Coast.I liked this route the writers took, but unfortunately it wasn't enough to balance the other bad things out.
It's a pattern in these catastrophe movies. We get to meet several families dealing with different problems, like spouses being at a critical point in their marriage, kids, teenagers out of control, hating their parents for different reasons and so on. We get a bunch of crazy families here, all dealing with a lot of problems. Unfortunately, the writers did a poor job in this regard and coupled with poor acting, resulted in making the movie kinda average, if not worse.
Not long ago I watched Greenland and can't stop thinking of the mistakes they made in that movie, compared to what we see here. What I'm always complaining about in these disaster movies is human reaction, where the writers choose to lead the actors' actions. While I know you never know how you would react under such pressure and it's easier to judge in front of the tv, some things can't be forgiven as they are not normal and this move has plenty of this category. The movie has a rating of 4.6/10 on IMDB, this shows what most of the movie enthusiasts think. I'm giving it a 5/10 as I'm generous.
The funny thing is, most of us are just amateurs in this category, we judge what we see and don't know the technicals, but I read a review from a seismologist and you can guess how satisfied they were with how the writers excelled at the technical part. Please note the sarcasm here :)
Anyway, it's ok to watch it once, but it's still 83 minutes wasted as that time could have been used more smartly. Good thing I am always multitasking.
Rating: 50/100
Originally posted through scrobble.life/tv.
