Dante's Peak (1997): **

Directed by Roger Donaldson

Why did I see this movie?

Because it was on Encore, and I was too sleepy to do anything. It's kind of a credit to this movie that it didn't put me to sleep, even though it has nearly an hour of interminally bored setup before shit starts blowin' up.

Once the action gets going, it is kind of entertaining for one reason—the characters keep on ending up in situations that seem impossible to get out of. So the interest comes in them figuring out what to do about it. What's interesting is that the solutions are usually just blind luck (their SUV is stuck in a lava flow, and more lava is coming down the hill to burn them all alive. How do they get away? The SUV just gets unstuck in the nick of time), and have nothing to do with the skill and courage of the participants. I also very much appreciated the climax of the movie. Instead of some big explosive thing (that happens just before the climax), it's Pierce Brosnan all alone in the front seet of an SUV, trying to reach the button on a NASA transmitter before the collapsing mineshaft his SUV is stuck in crushes him. And the roof of the SUV keeps getting lower and lower...

Anyway. At any rate this film is better than it's crap-filled counterpart, Volcano. WOO! Now THAT was SHIT.

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