Volcano (film)

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Volcano
Volcano theatrical poster
Directed by	Mick Jackson
Produced by	Stokely Chaffin Martha Cotton Andrew Z. Davis Neal H. Moritz
Written by	Jerome Armstrong Billy Ray
Starring	Tommy Lee Jones Anne Heche Don Cheadle Gaby Hoffmann John Carrol Lynch
Music by	Alan Silvestri
Cinematography	Theo van de Sande
Editing by	Don Brochu Michael Tronick
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	April 25, 1997
Running time	104 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$95,000,000 (estimated)^[1]
Gross revenue	$122,823,468^[1]
IMDb profile

Volcano is a 1997 disaster action film starring Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, and Don Cheadle. It was directed by Mick Jackson, and was released in the United States on April 25, 1997, just months after the release of Dante's Peak, another film about a volcano with a similar plot.

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Reception
- 4.1 Availability
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot

Tommy Lee Jones stars as Mike Roark, a divorced Los Angeles emergency official who takes charge when a volcano grows out of the La Brea Tar Pits. A river of lava flows down Wilshire Boulevard, through the Metro Red Line subway tunnel, and creates a fountain of lava next to the Beverly Center shopping mall in Beverly Hills. The lava destroys one subway train in the Red Line, kills the Metro chairman by melting him, burns cars, firemen, homes, and fire trucks, and burns down the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

In spite of placing himself and his teenage daughter in danger, Mike decides to save the city by diverting the river of lava (with the help of demolition teams) into the concrete channel of Ballona Creek, which allows the lava to flow safely into the Pacific Ocean, but there's a problem -- Amy (Anne Heche) reminds him that San Vicente Boulevard does not slope in the direction which Mike thinks. It will instead flow the opposite direction -- right into the thousands of patients at Cedars Sinai Hospital. So, Mike orders the demolition team to plant charges in both the street and the Beverly Center, but as they do, the lava hits a block on the Red Line subway and a massive geyser of lava erupts out of San Vicente Boulevard threatening the Beverly Center and its occupants. Moments later, once the charges are planted, they are fired one by one, and the new 22-story Beverly Heights apartment building just across from the Beverly Center comes crashing down just as Mike Roark saves his daughter Kelly Gaby Hoffmann and a little boy named Tommy. As desired, the lava hits the Pacific Ocean, bringing to an end Mt. Wilshire's reign of terror. Emmit finds Roark with a phone call from the chief of police. Roark takes the phone and hands it back to Emmit, he's going home with his daughter.

[edit] Cast

Tommy Lee Jones - Mike Roark
Anne Heche - Dr. Amy Barnes
Gaby Hoffmann - Kelly Roark
Don Cheadle - Emmit Reese
Jacqueline Kim - Dr. Jaye Calder
John Carroll Lynch - Stan Olber
Keith David - Police Lieutenant Ed Fox
John Corbett - Norman Calder
Michael Rispoli - Gator Harris
Jared Thorne & Taylor Thorne - Tommy

[edit] Production

The premise for the movie is loosely based on the appearance of Parícutin, a volcano which emerged from a farmer's field in Mexico.^{[citation needed]} The depiction of the behavior of volcanoes and lava in the rest of the movie, however, is for entertainment rather than scientific accuracy, because a volcano is exceedingly unlikely to form anywhere in Southern California in the near geologic future because the closest tectonic plate to Los Angeles is the San Andreas Fault, which is transform fault, meaning that the plates slide past each other. In addition, no known hotspot lies around for hundreds of miles.^{[citation needed]}

Volcano was filmed in various locations in California, including the Mojave Desert, the city of Torrance, and the Beverly Center.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Reception

Roger Ebert gave the film 1.5/4 stars writing "This is a surprisingly cheesy disaster epic."^[2] Mike LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle says, "It can't make us care",^[3] and Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle describes the film as "an embarrassment, albeit one of the so-bad-it's-kinda-good variety" giving it 1.5/5 stars.^[4] On RottenTomatoes.com Volcano has a rating of 35%, classifying it as "rotten".^[5]

Volcano was released to 2,774 screens on April 25, 1997 and grossed $14.58 million on its opening weekend. Domestically the film grossed $47.47 million and $72.6 million at the foreign box office, bringing its world wide total to about $120.1 million. These totals were significantly lower than the $178 million world wide gross of Volcano's competitor with a similar plot Dante's Peak which opened in February 1997, just two months prior to Volcano. Comparing the two films, Marc Savlov says, "While Dante's Peak at least offered some sort of glimpse into the geological workings of volcanoes and the men and women who study them, Volcano dispenses entirely with the intellect and goes straight for the guts".^[4]

Volcano was nominated for, but did not win, the 1997 Razzie Award for "Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property".^{[citation needed]}