I love "Dante's Peak"

[ForrestGump]

Lost count of how many times I watched it, but I'm watching it again now, in the wee hours of this morning. I love the film, and it's one I could watch over and over a good many more times, too. I didn't see it in the theaters, but a fair while later on some movie channel, though I do remember when Volcano came out around the same time, as so often seems to happen, and people commenting on that synchronicity. I haven't seen Volcano, except for a few bits while channelsurfing over the years, but it looks like it's a lesser film despite the highly-redeeming presence of the Most Excellent Tommy Lee Jones.

The thing I like most about Dante's Peak, I think, is that the way it portrays field scientists, to me, strikes me as somehow extremely realistic. I am a field scientist (on a break, as far as career goes, but I'm still very much one) and the very first time I saw this film the behavior of the geologists just resonated with me very strongly and immediately. I'm not sure I could point to any one particular interaction or piece of dialog, but when the USGS team is together the way they interact and just are is so faithful to the real thing. Put it this way: their portrayal is vastly different --- and that's very welcome -- than the way in which scientists are usually depicted even in current films. I love the way they portray the research team. Great acting, too, in that it's uniformly natural.

Dr Dalton, Pierce Brosnan's character, is also more realistic than it could have been in that he is hardly a superman and infallible. The fact is that I or any of the field-savvy scientists I've worked with could've done the kind of thing that he did, under similar circumstances, if everything around us went to hell. The way he talks and interacts with people, too, is spot on. Not typical of a Hollywood leading role. I like, too, that the other scientists on the team are very much what you'd expect to find in such a team. Even the bureaucrat-scientist so brilliantly played by Charles Hallahan is a familiar archetype, especially to anyone who has ever worked with or as a Fed or other state, national, or local government research agency. And he's not painted in black-and-white, either.

Linda Hamilton is really good, too, as usual.

Roger Donaldson, the Director, had a strong and serious interest in geology since he was a kid in New Zealand (he almost made his degree one in geology..actually, I think he DID major in geology but never completed the degree because he quit to pursue filmmaking) and he engaged the technical-advisor services of some well-known volcanologists for this film, that undoubtedly further helps. He was determined to keep it real and I think he did a great job. For sure, anyone who thinks a pyroclastic flow or lahar sounds pretty benign will have their eyes opened by the special effects. Roger Donaldson's done some great work, beginning with his first feature (and countryman Sam Neill's feature debut, in the lead role) in 1977's New Zealand film Sleeping Dogs. And he looks kinda like Bill Clinton these days... :D

The plot's got a few hokey devices, of course, some of them probably concessions to the Hollywood machine (the two children in peril is not so bad, but Ruffy The Wonder Dog, in concert with the kids, is kind of a Hollywood cliché), and the whole bit with the truck on the lava flow is a bit of a stretch (though, sure, anything's possible). I don't know if such a large body of water as that alpine lake could acidify so strongly or so quickly, but I'm willing to (a) accept that the sequence may have been vetted by scientists with more specialized knowledge than mine and (b) if the creative types overruled the boffins, it's hardly a surprise and -- hey -- it's not a documentary. Overall, for a big-budget Hollywood spectacular, I think they were pretty restrained in many respects.

I like it, anyway. :-)

[Cannikin]

1. I like it too. Better than Volcano IMHO

[ForrestGump]

2. ALERT: HERE BE SPOILERS!

I like how, at the end, Pierce has to be rescued by professionals with tons of equipment, revealing himself as a real girlyman in comparison to the typical action hero who'd chew his way out of the truck and walk out of there carrying the woman, the two kids, and Ruffy The Wonder Dog (somehow I just knew his name was going to be Ruffy) despite a compound fracture. In fact, Arnold would probably just stand his ground in front of the pyroclastic cloud, perhaps grimace a little, and the cloud would reverse trajectory, terrified, and high-tail it back to the safety of the mountain before even reaching the town.