Rising from the ashes of the 1990s, comes a great underrated disaster movie call Dante's Peak. Directed by Roger Donaldson, Dante's Peak is a movie about a volcano set in the Pacific Northwest named, obviously, Dante's Peak that's ready to erupt. United States Geological Survey Vulcanologist Dr. Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) is sent to the area to check out the volcano; only to find that, the volcano will end up erupting sooner than later. With the Mayor Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton), he tries to send the town on alert, only to be shut down by his superior, because the town happens to be second place in the 'most desirable small town to live in the US' list, and they don't want any negative accusations to threaten the town economy. Like Harry predict, the volcano erupts, leaving everybody struggling to survive. Now Harry Dalton and Rachel must journey through ashes and lava to find their kids, and exit the town before it's become too late for them. In my opinion, this movie is a lot better than the similar movie that came out, the same year in Mick Jackson's Volcano. This movie didn't made ash of itself. A lot more realistic and scientifically accurate in tone, that makes this film even more frighten than the fake looking cartoony, Tommy Lee Jones's film. Although the makers of this film, did embellish a little on volcano type logic like having characters able to breath despite Volcanic ash falling on them and outrunning the 700 km/h pyroclastic flow for the sake of the action. You really have to suspension of disbelief to enjoy this movie. Others suspension of disbelief scenes, like the driving on hot lava-crossing sequence was really film with stunt men driving over real lava, based on the film commentary. Who knew, that was really possible! Some geologists say they enjoy this movie because they get to see volcanologists in the field and some factual science did go along with the explosions. The film still holds up, as the effects were fantastic at the time. You would think the movie had a lot of CGI, but it's only specifically used for the lava. Majority of the film's visual effects were done either practically, or with very large miniatures, such as the bridge sequence, the dam burst, and even the mountain was a model. The pyroclastic flow was particularly impressive. I love how they use real new footage of the erupting of Mount St. Helens of 1980, and use it for this film. The pacing in the film is great. Dante's had a ton of build up with the threat exposed in the last arc that never really felt like it paid off to me. I didn't like any of the characters from Dante's Peak, besides the Volcanologists crew and Pierce Brosnan. No town folks was worth caring about, not the greedy businessman, or the helicopter pilot as they did a lot of things that would win a Darwin award in stupidity. But the worst had to be Grandma Ruth (Elizabeth Hoffman) who does the most stupid things to get the plot going. Mostly, the whole Grandma heroic sacrifice and rescue was kinda was pointless when you think about it. Pierce Brosnan was great as the cliché main scientist protagonist. Still, it's hard not to think of him as James Bond in this film. He kinda plays it off that way in the action scenes. He's seem less like a scientist, and more like action star. I wish, maybe he could put more drive to separate himself from his James Bond counterpart. Linda Hamilton really get underplay as the person with the most lowbrow level of character development. Honestly, you could put anybody in this role. While, she was in the film, she doesn't stand out as the Mayor. For a mayor, she really doesn't have that much power in the film. She went from being a believable bad ass woman that beat all evil comers in 1991's Terminator 2 to near useless below par character that Pierce Brosnan's character has to save. It's so embarrassing. The children actors are alright. Yes, they can be annoying at times, but I didn't mind them as much as other children character in disaster movies. Overall: It's the best Volcano movie that I saw, so far, so I lava this movie! It's an explosive treat, worth the time watching!
Review of Dante's Peak
