Your favorite critic, Maryland J. Koba, has decided to stretch his claws and take on a larger medium - feature films. And, what a great way for him to start out - reviewing the first disaster movie of 1997. No, not Beverly Hills Ninja! We're talking disaster movies, not movie disasters. Nope, today our subject is our favorite box-carrying silent-no-longer film star, Kirk Trutner - star of the Universal (spit!) picture Cameron Versus the Volcano... er... Dante's Peak.
The story behind Dante's Peak is the standard disaster movie scenario. An expert, in this case geologist Pierce Brosnan, discovers a potential disaster - the possible eruption of the Dante's Peak volcano, which towers above a small town with the same name. His superiors think he's crazy, and so does most of the town - except for the mayor, Linda Hamilton. She's crazy about him. (And who wouldn't be???) Well, the volcano blows up, naturally, and our heroes go through fire, flood, and acid-filled lakes but emerge relatively unscathed and in "luuuuv". (Sigh...) A lot of very stupid people wind up dying first. The story's pretty typical. But, let's face it. If I wanted to see character development, I'd go see The English Patient. People go to Dante's Peak to see things blow up. And blow up they do!
Our Kirk plays Terry Furlong, one of the geologists who works with Brosnan's character at the USGS. He's in charge of "Spiderlegs", the walking robot that descends into volcanos to send readouts back to the scientists. Sort of like in the X-Files episode "Firewalker". Like most scientists - and I should know, I work with a lot of them - these guys are pretty strange. Kirk gets some of the best lines in the entire movie, especially when he's interacting with Spiderlegs. My personal favorite is, when they're ready to send the robot into the volcano, he asks "ready to see the sights, big fella?" The robot nods enthusiastically. Brosnan then hands him a cup of coffee and says, "it's time for your medication." Well, those of us who met Kirk at NP96 would probably agree.
The part that freaked me out was when Kirk descended into the volcano to go after Spiderlegs, which had gotten stuck. Naturally, there happened to be a tremor JUST THEN, (this IS produced by Gale Anne Hurd!) and our hero gets caught in a rockslide and breaks his leg. Kirk and Pierce get airlifted out by a helicopter - just the two of them dangling at the end of a rope in mid-air. Brrrrr! I'm getting vertigo just thinking about it. Good thing he wasn't wearing the kilt! Kirk spends the rest of the movie on crutches, but still contributing. He even winds up saving Brosnan and Hamilton by noticing their transmitter light blinking. He even managed to live to the end of the movie, something that Clancy Brown rarely gets to do. And he didn't even beat anybody up! (except Spiderlegs, that is.)
Best quotes: (other than previously mentioned)
In all, Dante's Peak is a heck of a ride. Granted, it's not for the highbrow THE-AY-TUH audience, but it's a lot of fun. Kirk proves that he CAN talk and walk at the same time, and even manages to steal a few scenes from James Bond and Sarah Connor. I give it five out of five cups of cappucino, plus a regular coffee for Pierce Brosnan.
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