Starring:
Kim Delaney as Dr. Samantha Hill
Beau Bridges as President Paul Hollister
Frank Langella as Dr. Hill
Melissa Sue Anderson as First Lady Megan Hollister
Dean Cain as Brad
Oliver Hudson as Will
Carly Pope as Laura
David Cubitt as Dr. Jordan Fisher
Tyrone Benskin as Jackson
Special Features:
None
Other Info:
Widescreen
Running Time: 169 Minutes
Synopsis:
The following is from the DVD cover:
“Another massive 10.5 quake tears apart the West Coast, threatening to turn the American landscape into a hellish wasteland. Seismologist Samantha Hill (Emmy® winner Kim Delaney, TV’s “CSI: Miami”) sees an even greater threat: an ever-widening fault line that’s heading straight for the country’s two largest nuclear reactors. If a meltdown occurs, millions will die.Samantha and the American president (Emmy® and Golden Globe® winner Beau Bridges, TV’s “Stargate SG-1”) agree only one man can help themthe scientist who predicted this terrifying natural disaster years beforeSamantha’s own father, Dr. Earl Hill (Golden Globe® nominee Frank Langella, “Good Night, And Good Luck.”), now counted as a possible casualty of a massive Las Vegas quake. Together with a crack rescue team including Brad (Dean Cain, “Mayday”) and Will (Oliver Hudson, “The Out-of-Towners”), Samantha must find her father and stop the fault from slicing uncontrollably toward millions of people and the ultimate nuclear apocalypse.”
“10.5 Apocalypse” is not rated
Mini-Review:
After watching the first five minutes of “10.5 Apocalypse,” I was hooked. The film opened with big special effects, a fast paced narrative, and more. The opening scene of the movie basically featured the big scene from “The Poseidon Adventure,” and that was just kicking things off. I was quite impressed. Unfortunately, five minutes later I wanted to turn the movie off. There were a couple of reasons for this. First of all, this movie features some of the worst camerawork that I’ve ever seen. In literally every scene, the camera shakes, a character delivers a line, the camera zooms in for a close-up dramatically, shakes some more, then zooms back out again. This happens in every scene with every character for the whole movie. It would be OK for a short scene to heighten tension, but over 3 hours it simply doesn’t work.
My other problem with the movie was the ridiculous science. It seemed like the writers were putting the script together based on Jr. High science and a couple of episodes of “3-2-1 Contact” they might have seen in the 80’s. For example, nobody but the scientists seems to know anything about earthquakes and tectonic plate movements, so were treated to a basic, if incorrect, lessons explained over and over. Then in every scene where the earth splits open, we see lava forming less than 100 ft underground. Not likely. Maybe I’m nitpicking, but it bugged me. I was also really bugged by the fact that they showed a shot of New Orleans and the Superdome (obviously Hurricane Katrina evacuation footage) and called it Houston and the Astrodome. Being from Houston, we’re bugged by details like that. Don’t mess with Texas.
I’ll hand it to the cast, they acted their little hearts out. Beau Bridges cried like someone died while the cheesy CG effects showed Galveston sinking into the ocean. But no acting in the world is going to save a film from a long, drawn out script that’s implausible, cheesy, and boring. Like many mini-series, it should have been about an hour and a half shorter and it would have worked better.
