Volcano

REVIEW:

Volcano (1997) has received mixed reactions, with a low rating on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Many viewers criticize the film for its scientific inaccuracies, particularly when it comes to the portrayal of volcanic activity. While I understand these concerns, I find it a bit frustrating. After all, Volcano is not trying to be a National Geographic documentary; it’s a Hollywood disaster movie, designed to entertain rather than educate. The premise of a volcano forming in the middle of Los Angeles is clearly a stretch of the imagination, but that’s the point—it’s meant to be an over-the-top spectacle.

The film came out in the same year as Dante’s Peak, another volcano-themed movie, which naturally invites comparisons. Personally, I prefer Dante’s Peak for its better pacing and characters, but Volcano still holds its own as an enjoyable and action-packed film. It embraces its absurdity, providing plenty of explosive action and destruction to satisfy any disaster movie fan. Watching Los Angeles get consumed by lava is thrilling in its own way, even if Dante’s Peak offers a more grounded approach to volcanic eruptions.

That being said, my biggest gripe with Volcano lies not in the scientific inaccuracies, but in the questionable decisions made by the characters throughout the movie. There are several moments that make you scratch your head, like a character telling a dog to eat eggs off the floor after a scalding hot pan fell, or a scientist standing directly over a crack where people died the day before. The scene where all sound stops before the first eruption is tense, but why did the firemen’s hoses go completely silent? And then, we have Tommy Lee Jones, who watches lava melt a fire truck but somehow believes that an overturned bus could push the lava in a different direction. These moments take you out of the movie, not because they’re impossible, but because they defy common sense.

Despite the numerous questionable decisions, there are still moments that manage to build genuine tension. One of the most memorable scenes is when Stan walks through the melting train and leaps into the lava. It’s a moment that conveys real danger and feels like the stakes are truly high, a rarity in a film that often glosses over the threat of molten lava consuming everything in its path. If the movie had more scenes like this, it might have left a stronger impact.

Volcano also demonstrates that you don’t need a global catastrophe to make a disaster movie exciting. The confined setting of Los Angeles gives the film a unique flavour, as we watch the city’s landmarks and infrastructure slowly crumble under the intense heat and pressure. There’s something inherently fun about seeing an urban landscape overtaken by a force of nature, and Volcano delivers on that front without needing to go global with its destruction.

The final shot of the newly formed volcano in the heart of L.A. is a visual highlight, and I wish they had lingered on it a bit longer. Unfortunately, the movie ends rather abruptly, just as you start to appreciate the scale of the devastation. Overall, Volcano may not be a masterpiece, but if you’re willing to overlook the scientific missteps and questionable character decisions, it’s a highly enjoyable disaster film that delivers plenty of thrills.