Synopsis
An earthquake shatters a peaceful Los Angeles morning and opens a fissure deep into the earth, causing lava to start bubbling up. As a volcano begins forming in the La Brea Tar Pits, the director of the city's emergency management service, working with a geologist, must then use every resource in the city to try and stop the volcano from consuming LA.
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Cast
- Tommy Lee JonesMike Roark
- Anne HecheDr. Amy Barnes
- Gaby HoffmannKelly Roark
- Don CheadleEmmit Reese
- Jacqueline KimDr. Jaye Calder
- Keith DavidLt. Ed Fox
- John CorbettNorman Calder
- Michael RispoliGator Harris
- John Carroll LynchStan Olber
- Marcello ThedfordKevin
Recommendations
- 80
Los Angeles Times
But a great sense of pace is a wonderful thing, and director Jackson and his crew (who made good use of hand-held and Steadicam shots and reportedly averaged an impressive 30 to 40 camera setups a day) move so quickly from shot to shot and location to location that viewers have a limited time to dwell on the film's predictable implausibilities. - 75
ReelViews
In fact, this is one of the best pure disaster movies ever made (not that it has much competition). Congratulations to director Mick Jackson for a job well done. - 67
Entertainment Weekly
I had a pretty good time at Volcano. The reason I didn't have a better time is that the characters aren't just schlocky, they're boring. - 60
Chicago Reader
Unfortunately, Volcano is also faithful to Hollywood's legendary lack of originality. - 60
The New York Times
In Volcano, the thrills are so well wrought that they eventually lose their novelty and become numbing. - 50
Salon
A flatulent blast of superheated air from the seething bowels of Hollywood, features all the usual idiocies -- implausibility on an epic scale, bogus "human interest" elements, plot developments that offer all the surprises of a Bob Dole speech. - 50
San Francisco Chronicle
With its fake-looking technology and empty characters, Volcano eventually becomes as obvious as its what-if premise. - 50
San Francisco Examiner
Congratulations to director Mick Jackson and writers Jerome Armstrong and Billy Ray for liberating themselves from the tedious demands of believability.
