10.0 Earthquake is the bargain bin equivalent of last summer’s blockbuster hit, San Andreas. This movie is the kind that should not have made it out of post-production. However, despite its shortcomings, 10.0 Earthquake and its surprising cast list, bring to the screen an enjoyably bad production. The premise is an elementary attempt at a political message involving the authorization and acceptance of Fracking within the borders of the United States and its equal affect on environmental standards all while showcasing the dangers to the populace…wait, I mean, as much as they’d like to think that’s what they were making, the honest truth is they just made a really crappy action movie. A fracking company digs too deep, which interrupts some guys Jinga game (he was so close to winning), the earth is pissed and opens its mouth to devour those that wronged her, a fresh out of college (hmmm, familiar?) scientist teams up with a nutbag to save Los Angeles from falling into the ocean and becoming a volcano. Sounds action packed right? Wrong.
The action that you would expect in a movie like this is lacking. Many times, the action sequences seemed forced and fake. I don’t mean fake as in they looked bad (which, well, they did) I mean fake as in they manufactured suspense by making the mundane task seem impossible. For example, the fissures created by the tremors were about a foot wide. Wow, a whole foot, we will never make that gap! We couldn’t possibly step over it or go around it, we must get a running start and halfheartedly leap over it or surely face certain death. That’s about as suspenseful as it gets. A cellphone being retrieved from the back of a truck, the occasional tremor, and a overly long shot of a bridge taking forever to fall just so it could be timed perfectly with he passing of the main characters truck. I mean, The Pianist had more action than this movie. On top of all this “action”, the characters themselves are the stupidest bunch of people i have ever seen. They would individually put themselves in certain danger and imminent death for no reason other than to please the audience. Going back to the cell phone mentioned above. The wife of the main character, unbeknownst to how, managed to allow her phone to fly out the rear window into the bed of the truck. Now, instead of her climbing through the large enough window and grabbing the phone real quick, the main character tells her to take the wheel of their speeding truck so that he can open his door and scale the side of the pick-up. It then takes him a few attempts to actually grab the phone, very suspenseful! I’m surprised that the cast agreed to do this film.
If the gentleman in the yellow jacket looks familiar to you, its because that’s none other than Principal Ed Rooney. Jeffery Jones must have randomly picked a script sent to him when he decided to do this film. His character, a rich, old guy with a 20-something trophy wife, is the crazy scientist that saves everyone using the someone else’s idea. Among the rest of the cast we see Henry Ian Cusick or better know as Desmond from the hit show LOST. The acting done by the cast was acceptable, not great, but not as bad as the last film I reviewed. The one shining star, in my opinion, was the comedic break given by David Barrera’s character Hector.
Despite the scientific inaccuracies, the movie itself was still very watchable. Yes, a lot of the action was forced, a lot of the action taken by characters didn’t make sense, and a lot of the Earthquake scenes were just flat out not present, I would say this movie could very well be watched, and albeit, enjoyed after a few rum and cokes, on the rocks of course. The One Star Review gives 10.0 Earthquake a 2.0 on the Bad Film Scale.
Rating: 2/5
The One Star Review 