Dante's Peak (1997)

I think in between those years i have watched it numerous times.

CGI has got better but to the point where it seems a little unreal, this doesn't.

Daft plot points (we still get plenty of them) but generally a really watchable disaster movie.

Fmovies: The 'old-fashioned' disaster movie scenario enjoyed a brief resurgence in the latter half of the 90s. After the success of Twister and ID4, films like Hard Rain, Titanic, Armageddon and Deep Impact followed in its wake. Like the two competing asteroid movies, Dante's Peak was in competition with the imaginatively named Volcano as THE Lava flow of 1997. Which one is better? Well, comparing the two is like comparing an atomic blast to a popping pimple.

Pierce Brosnan is Harry Dalton, a Vulcanologist (or James Bond in disguise if you want) who predicts a major eruption in the quaint Pacific-Northwestern town of Dante's Peak. No one wants to listen to him since the town has just been named the 2nd most desirable place to live in America and is in the early stages of a thriving economy. It's the politics from Jaws all over again. Despite being shouted down by his superiors, Harry sticks around to keep his eye on the imposing mountain and woo Mayor Wando (Linda Hamilton), who is the only one who believes the 4000-year dormant volcano might blow its top.

If you've seen one disaster movie, you've seen 'em all in terms of character importance. Yes, it's bloody obvious who is going to die, some of these people might as well have a death clock counting down stuck on their foreheads. And the panicking idiot mobs don't deserve anything less firey. When will nameless extras learn that following the crowd isn't the best way? I guess this is the weakest part of Dante's Peak, it never really distances itself from that single, eternal cliché of disaster films.

But the film is really nothing but a showcase for special effects and it does them surprisingly well. Made before the extreme popularity of CGI, Dante's Peak has a lot of real-life destruction, in-camera effects and stunt-work. Yes, there is a fair bit of CGI and for a 10-year-old film they still hold up really well. All Volano (Zzzz...) had to offer was a very, very slight lava flow and an unintentionally hilarious scene with a melting man but with Dante's Peak we get earthquakes, boiled skinny dippers, lakes of acid, ash blizzards that create a unique atmosphere, thunder and lightning, red hot boulders raining down from the sky, mudslides, lava (of course), a massive pyroclastic cloud and lots of deep, deep bass sound effects.

It's not a life-changing film by any means, but as disaster movies go it's one of the best, has an occasionally spooky score and entertains really well despite Brosnan taking it all so seriously. I would have given it a higher rating if they killed the dog (more original) and deleted the annoying Grant Heslov's utterly pointless character.

Great entertaining movie! Pretty much tells the tell of Mt St. Helens. I saw it in the theatre. Since then I have owned the VHS,DVD,Blu Ray versions on the movie. I watch it 2-3 Time's a year and it never gets old. Watch this over the Tommy Lee Jones disaster Volcano

Dante's Peak fmovies. There is a formula for disaster movies and books. An insightful scientist sees The Bad Thing is going to happen, various foils keep him from warning people (often with sillier motivation than in this film), we get to know a bunch of average Joe characters who survive or do not survive the disaster. Earthquake movies, movies about made-up natural disasters that cannot happen, asteroid movies, even some nuclear holocaust films (like The Day After, unique in how many survive). It's a hackneyed formula, but it also works, and nothing else really does work as well for disaster plots. It was followed here.

The special effects were terrific in the day, and they still hold up very very well in 2012.

For a Hollywood film, the science was pretty good. I actually cringed back at the shots of Hawaii type basalt floes (just...no), and the ashfall cleared up nicely whenever they wanted a wide shot, which anyone in Yakima could tell you it really doesn't do, and the boat and drive-over-lava scenes were silly, and if you paddle a boat (through acid or not) with one hand, it's not going to go straight, and our heroes didn't need to cover their mouths in ashfall (meaning, IRL, the ash would turn to concrete in their lungs and they'd suffocate). However, all that having been complained about, much else was very accurate: what gets tested for by volcanologists, what monitoring stations of the day looked like, what some of the warning signs of a coming eruption might be. Most Hollywood film reviews by me on science-based movies are nothing but a list of what they did wrong, with no "however" of accurate bits to follow that list, so kudos for doing it more than half right.

A pleasant diversion, very pretty to look at.

Yes, there are some cheesy, hollywoodish moments in this movie, but the actors bring enough charisma and presence to hold the story together. Pierce Brosnan makes a convincing scientist, whose passion and desire to protect the townspeople plays off nicely with Mayor Linda Hamilton's similar concerns.

But what I most want to say is that the volcano itself was both believable and accurate. So I want to commend the filmmakers for having enough integrity to make an entertaining film within the boundaries of scientific accuracy. And face it, you don't go to a movie like Dante's Peak to see insightful drama, or peer deep into the human psyche. The people and the volcano play off each other very nicely. It's not often you get a film with both chemistry and physics.

Why the hell has this movie only gotten a 5.5 rating? It is one of the best action movies to come out of the 90's. Peirce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton are dead on in their roles. The movie has action, love, despair and redemption. I gave this movie a 10 and I'm sticking with it! Linda has been one of the most talented actresses around for a while. I was very upset that she did not get a golden globe or academy award nomination for T2:Judgement Day. She know what to bring to her roles and how to use them. Mr. Prosnan is a excellent actor. But he is better in this film than in most of the Bond films he has been in. The special effects were awesome and inspiring. Can anyone outrun a paraclastic cloud in a beat up and burned pickup that just drove over red-hot lava? The answer is yes but just barely. Dedication means that you stay with the truck and the NASA signal device for at least 2 or 3 days until someone can drag you out and also get the family you were trying to save. Then you can go sea fishing after your compound fracture heals. This is a great movie.