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San Andreas | 2015 | PG-13 | - 1.6.5

An LAFD helicopter pilot (Dwayne Johnson) is blindsided when California's San Andreas Fault creates several Magnitude 9 earthquakes that threaten the lives of his estranged wife (Carla Gugino) and daughter (Alexandra Daddario). He determines to save them and other victims from the destruction that ranges from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Also with Colton Haynes, Archie Panjabi, Paul Giamatti and Kylie Minogue. Directed by Bret Peyton. [1:54]

SEX/NUDITY 1 - A husband kisses his wife briefly and in another scene they hug. A college-age man kisses a college-age woman briefly during a flood as his little brother grins at them. A woman touches a man's thigh, asking if he is OK. A woman touches a man's thigh and tells him he did a good job. A man takes a woman's trembling hand to comfort her in a couple of scenes.
 An ex-wife tells her ex-husband during a visit at her boyfriend's house that she is moving in with the boyfriend; the ex looks surprised and embarrassed. A young boy says, "I can't wait to be 20" (so he can date). After parachuting into a baseball field with a woman, a man says, "It's been a while since I got you to second base" and she laughs. We hear that a husband and his wife are separated and see divorce papers on a table in the man's house. A young boy tells a college-age girl to give her phone number to his older brother and she does.
 Several women wear sleeveless tank tops or sleeveless blouses that reveal cleavage in several scenes. A woman in a flooded area wears a scoop neck shirt that reveals moderate cleavage. A young woman wears a skimpy bikini that exposes shoulders, some cleavage, bare arms, midriff, navel, and legs to the top of the thighs.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - The San Andreas Fault shocks the entire state of California from Los Angeles up to San Francisco in wave after wave of massive tremors: men, women, and children run and scream in both endpoint cities in dozens of scenes and are covered with dirt and dust as streets open up, buckle and throw cars; commercial buildings, houses, gas stations, stores, and other infrastructure shake and break apart as at least 100 tall buildings crumble, disintegrate, and/or fall over into the camera while large gaps open up in highways and cars fall into the openings; in one gap, a gas station has been ripped in two, leaving a part on each side with cars hanging into the opening. Several major tremors hit a city and level skyscraper after skyscraper; the buildings fall as glass shatters loudly and concrete chunks hit the street with loud crashes as dozens of small fires ignite and we see a lot of smoke among the flames; streets buckle, open gaps, and vehicles fall through causing people to run, scream, and shout (we see them all covered in grime and grit). A gigantic tsunami wave overwhelms the Golden Gate Bridge, which buckles, twists, and falls to pieces leaving only a couple of its uprights; the extremely high water throws large ships, trolley cars, and office furniture through high-rise buildings, loudly crashing plate glass windows and doors and scattering glass on the ground before washing it away and the streets fill with water; the tsunami hits the city in several waves after earthquakes pass through and the streets fill with large amounts of debris, concrete chunks and water. A tall building, advertised to be the strongest and most disaster-resistant in the country, crumbles and falls over into another building during a tsunami wave as we hear girders creak.
 We see many men and women fall or disappear off-screen in several scenes, presumably dead; throughout the film hundreds of people are lost under debris and concrete chunks, likely killed. Several men fall through openings in roadways and through holes in the floors of parking garages, where windshields explode out of cars.
 A man grabs a young girl, tosses her over a gap in a buckling roadway to another man but the first man is stuck with rebar through his foot (no blood is seen) and he disappears through the gap in the roadway (we hear he died for his work) as the dam crumbles and releases a huge flood into the valley with millions of gallons of water pouring out and flooding the surrounding landscape; we see chunks of concrete and other debris thrown out from the dam and floating in water as well as cars floating away.
 Disaster sirens sound as we see water in a harbor descend quickly before we see a 200-foot tsunami wave in the distance; we see a man and a woman in a large motor boat climb the wave, but a huge barge at the top tips toward them, the propeller ripping off the awning of the smaller boat; full of boxcar containers, the barge tilts and slams into the harbor, then falls onto a nearby street where one container slides off and falls, smashing on top of a man, who disappears and we understand must be dead.
 A teen girl drives her car over the edge of a highway and into a crevasse, screaming; the car flips onto its hood, slides, and hangs vertically from a cliff side before sliding a bit further five times during rescue; a helicopter approaches, sending a man down on a cable as the girl cries and screams and the man catches his arm under the car (he shouts in pain, but comes away with a treatable injury and no blood is seen); a second man descends on a cable and pulls the girl out as the car slides down to the bottom of the crevasse with a crash that crumples it (the girl's face is covered in small spots of blood). A man finds a woman trapped in her car and he and another man use levers and a car jack to lift a beam off her legs so she can escape; she is unhurt and the three of them run from the damaged area of the city. A helicopter pilot sends a rescue basket down to a woman on a rooftop and brings it up empty, but sees the woman hanging on to the cable and the lower part of the chopper; he pulls her in and we see some blood on her nose and lips.
 A man, a woman and a boy enter a building, they jump out of the way of shattered plate glass and struggle up to a higher floor; the woman finds herself on the third floor, while the man and the child go up a level and the boy says, "She's going to die, isn't she?" causing the man to become tearful as he pulls the boy out of water and sets him on a platform; debris blocks the staircases and the woman is trapped behind plate glass as water rises above her head and she sticks her nose in an area where air remains; a man tries several times to break the plate glass barrier to no avail, and the woman says goodbye and passes out under water before he slams his body and feet against the barrier at the door and breaks it down; he pulls the woman to safety, but she is not breathing so the man performs CPR for a long time, then gives up as everyone begins to cry, he begins CPR again and the woman coughs up water and sits up, alive.
 A woman runs to the roof of a building during an earthquake and sees a skyscraper shake and crumble to the ground, then another building falls and debris is thrown past her face and toward the audience; the rooftop area disintegrates and she climbs to the top of rubble as fires ignite all over the roof, and then a gas line ignites with a bang and flames fill a large part of the screen and forces a rescue chopper to retreat.
 A woman sees a skyscraper's top-floor restaurant table-service shake and then the whole room shakes apart, throwing plates, a chef catches fire and runs off-screen (we don't see what happens to him), men and women scream and fall, and large pieces of wall fall on people that we do not see again; a man falls through a hole in a wall and another man holds on to a length of rebar extending from the building and loses hold, falling and shouting (we do not see him hit the ground).
 A man getting into a pickup truck stops as another man points a pistol to his head and the first man turns, grabs the gun, and punches out the gun holder. A man and a woman crash-land a helicopter into a clothing store near an airport and hurriedly change behind tall counters into other clothing from the store to rid themselves of fuel soaked garments. An airplane flies over a city and runs out of gas; a man and a woman from inside the plane tandem parachute from the plane as the woman trembles and shouts in fear; they land in a baseball field on their feet and the man shouts to people in the streets to crouch down against the stadium walls as an earthquake continues (the stadium lights spark and crash, but no one is injured). Looters ransack shops and we hear two gunshots as men steal big screen TVs.
 Tall street lamps spark and fall to the pavement as windows explode from buildings and people take cover behind cars; a man is stabbed through the thigh by a long wedge of glass and a woman ties a tourniquet around the thigh before pulling out the glass in close-up (we see some blood in the wound and on the glass) and a little girl walks quickly past the camera with a large rag to her apparently bloody nose (no blood shows).
 A woman in a garage screams, "He's dead" as she looks out her crumpled car at someone we do not see and her legs are trapped somehow as she screams, "My legs!" and her soon-to-be stepfather leaves her there, telling a guard outside that she needs help; she screams and cries. A woman leaves a phone message for a man that if he is not already dead, she will kill him and the camera cuts to the man in a rubble-filled street, pushing people out of the way in order to get to safety first.
 Two scientists at the Hoover Dam as an earthquake hits and one is bounced around inside the dam wall compartment as he races up a ladder to the bridge-way, which cracks and allows cars to fall through; men, women, and children shout and scream as they run off the dam. A scientist predicts a mammoth earthquake from L.A. to San Francisco as a reporter interviews him and the building shakes; he and two women hide under a large desk twice and hold onto its legs.
 A street is covered with a long tarp and on it lie men and women receiving help from EMT personnel; we see some blankets but no distinct injuries. We see a man walking on crutches. We see a tent city where tsunami victims walk with blankets around them, accepting food and water from disaster relief representatives.
 We see screen images of wreckage and debris in earthquake aftermath in Japan, Alaska, and Chile. A glass-walled building falls and hundreds of plate glass windows crash to bits loudly and fill the streets. A helicopter flies away from a collapsed skyscraper as many other tall buildings collapse in dust, dirt, and smoke; we see an entire skyline disintegrate and crumble into gravel while many small and large fires break out in the city and we see the letters of the Hollywood sign fall and break and much of the city lays destroyed. We see an airliner lying broken in three pieces, in a flooding street, but no one is seen on board. A harbor shows platforms that break up and buckle with some smaller boats capsized (we do not see anyone in them). Airplanes at an airport catch fire and fire teams spray them with water.
 When tremors hit, a scientist shouts, "Take cover! Drop, cover and hold on!" as smoke and dust cover the movie screen and then clears to show men, women and children walking away, crying.
 We hear that an earthquake in Chile and ensuing tsunami destroyed Hilo, Hawaii, 8,000 miles away. In a flashback we see a family of four rowing a canoe and we hear that one of the two daughters died in an accident, drowning (we do not see it) and the father becomes tearful about this a few times. A seismologist predicts a statewide earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, caused by a new fault in Nevada and becomes agitated, looks scared, and trembles when no one listens to him. We hear that earthquakes hit San Francisco harder that Los Angeles and that a man's daughter was trapped there. We see a wall of several TV screens with reporters telling audiences that disaster preparedness is important.

LANGUAGE 5 - At least 1 F- word, 6 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 4 mild obscenities, name-calling (idiot, crazy, monster), stereotypical references to men, women, divorced couples, little brothers, fire & rescue personnel, scientists, skeptics, news reporters, rich cowards, heroes, exclamations (oh no, oh man), 1 religious profanity (GD), 19 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Oh God, Thank Goodness, God Be With You, and a prayer circle that we cannot hear).

SUBSTANCE USE - Two martinis are seen in close-up on a tray and we see clean wine glasses on tables in a restaurant, and three long shelves of liquor and wine bottles crash and break all over the floor when an earthquake strikes.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Natural disasters, disaster preparedness, families, relationships, love, guilt, cowardice, courage, determination, duty, sacrifice, protecting others, survival, listening to scientists, rebuilding.

MESSAGE - Disasters cause people to re-examine their priorities.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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