New Movie Review:

Is it possible that Americans, or at least American movie reviewers, don't actually watch movies? Could it be that they only listen to them?

That's the complaint that movie historian Andrew Sarris made as far back as the early 1960s, when the late Village Voice writer decried the elevation of visually dull social problem movies over the work of Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, among many others.

This was because the critics at the time only listened to these movies, and in the social message tales they found agreeable ideas and important statements, while in the westerns and thrillers they only heard what they took to be bad dialogue and a lot of hooey. Sarris spent the rest of his career fighting for movies that people have to see and not just listen to, as if they were dully illustrated radio shows.

The problem remains. How else to explain the reaction to San Andreas, the terrific new disaster movie starring Dwayne Johnson? This is an exciting, suspenseful tale about what happens when "the big one" hits California, and proves to be bigger than anyone expected – 64 on the Richter scale, so to speak. Riven through its center from Los Angeles to San Francisco, the state crumbles into itself, and it's hard to imagine that a lot of Americans with their love-hate relationship with both the region and its various exports – mostly the media – would shed a tear. Still, the film lures you in because at the center is a brave and resourceful rescue-helicopter pilot, Ray (Johnson) who must navigate the chaos to rescue first his estranged wife (since Die Hard, all action characters have to be unfairly rejected by their wives), here played by Carla Gugino, who is in Los Angeles, and then somehow get to San Francisco, to rescue their daughter (Alexandra Daddario, of True Detective fame). The thrust of the story is how do you keep a family together when the land itself is tearing apart. To that end, the film is about looks, about eyes and smiles, and fear-inflected faces, not dialogue that is purposely kept lean and functional – in part because American movies have to do better business in Europe and Asia, and small sentences are easier to translate. Thus, a "bad pun" like Ray's crack about getting to second base with his wife after they land in a baseball field is groaned at by pundits (I thought it was funny), as a further example of the film's idiocy.

Nay-sayers come up with the observation that of the several million dead only the story's central family matters. But what does one expect Ray to do? Ignore his family's summons and instead salvage strangers? In any case, he does rescue numerous others in the course of his quest. What's more important is that the special effects are among the best yet done. They look real, instead of generated by a computer. The technical accomplishment of the film is near-invisible, but it is one of the best edited films of the year, if one follows such skill sets. And Johnson is a terrific screen presence, both able to deliver lines convincingly but also to move with grace. Note the ease and beauty with which he unlinks himself from a chopper seat belt, or how he easefully slaps shut the rear of a pickup truce, like a Nureyev reaching out to a leading lady. This is where the fun, the entertainment, and the importance of San Andreas lay. It's a movie you have to look at, not listen to.