Dante's Peak

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

I was the at the perfect age when this came out. This film and Twister impacted my life hugely and made me want to get into special effects and film making. It probably should have been Jurassic Park but my older brother saw it and got scared so my parents forbid me to see it in a cinema. I will never forgive any of them for denying me that experience.

I remember seeing this film a couple of times at the cinema. Not as much as Twister, which I still like slightly more. This was a huge fx film for 1996 and they hold up admirably by today's standards. Probably because they didn't rely on the CG that was available at the time and instead shot a lot of miniatures and live action elements. In a disaster movie, you want your disaster to look great, and that's certainly the case here.

Comparing this to the bigger scale Roland Emmerich disasters we have a much less corny dialogue, a smaller group of characters that we can actually take the time to invest in and a disaster that doesn't top itself in the first act and then doesn't know how to end. Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton make the unlikely couple and I think they are the nicest, normal characters I've seen either of them play.

Roger Donaldson does a great job directing. Some of the earthquake sequences are shot with nothing but long lenses which makes deciphering what is going on a bit tricky. Perhaps wide shots of the destruction would have revealed their limitations. But the performances and the pacing and the look of the film are all fine.

The other thing I absolutely adore about both this and Twister is the music. Here James Newton Howard provides a majestic and ominous theme and John Powell scores the film. It's a bloody great soundtrack and I sometimes find myself randomly humming the theme.

The Tommy Lee Jones movie, Volcano, came out around the same time. I'm not sure if that got a big release in Australia. If it did I missed it at the cinema. But I was already loyal to Dante's Peak when I eventually rented it on VHS. This film has a more classic disaster film feel to it, which I love.

I can't remain unbiased when reviewing films like this, the nostalgia factor is too high. A lot of people think these films are stupid but I will have none of that. They helped make me the person I am today and for that I love them dearly.