Verdict
Summary
A massively budgeted disaster film that came at the height of the resurgence of disaster films in the 1990’s and the first of two big budget volcano movies to be released in 1997 (the other one was titled simply Volcano), Dante’s Peak is a well mounted and produced environmental thriller, but it loses the thread in the last act when the plot literally runs into a hole. Kino Lorber brings Dante’s Peak to 4K Ultra HD / Blu-ray in a two-disc combo pack, and the film shines in a new 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. Special features were ported over from previous editions, including an audio commentary by Donaldson, an isolated score, a making of documentary, a trailer, and a slipcover.
Plot:
A small town is besieged by a volcano.
Review:
A volcanologist named Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan between Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies) is called in to “the 2nd safest place to live in the USA with a population of under 20K” to get some readings of the massive volcano – Dante’s Peak – that sits near the town. When he gets there, he’s greeted by skeptical townsfolk and a helpful mayor (played by Linda Hamilton at 40), and given the tour of the area, he has a hunch that the volcano will erupt soon, but his boss (played by Charles Hallahan from The Thing) throws his readings in his face and insists that there’s no reason to cause panic in the town. While Dalton continues to feel that the threat of eruption is imminent, he takes a little time to begin a romantic relationship with the mayor (who has two kids), but when the volcano erupts, the town has no time whatsoever to evacuate, leading to mass chaos and mayhem. Before the second and much more devastating eruption occurs, Dalton and his team of volcanologists scramble to do whatever they can (which isn’t much) to save some people before it all turns to ash.
A massively budgeted disaster film that came at the height of the resurgence of disaster films in the 1990’s and the first of two big budget volcano movies to be released in 1997 (the other one was titled simply Volcano), Dante’s Peak is a well mounted and produced environmental thriller, but it loses the thread in the last act when the plot literally runs into a hole. When Dalton and the mayor and the kids (and a dog) seek shelter in a mineshaft, the movie basically ends, which is disappointing because up till then the film feels like it’s going somewhere. We know the town is destroyed and we sense that Dalton and the mayor will have a happy ending, but the movie just has nowhere to go at that point, and by ending it instead of developing and expanding on what the film established, the film turns out to be a little disappointing. I saw this twice theatrically (same with Volcano), and they’re both more or less equally entertaining, but this one had the most potential and felt more plausible of the two. Genre filmmaker Roger Donaldson did the best he could with this special effects-heavy picture, and it always pained me that he didn’t get his chance to make a Bond film because he would’ve been great at it.
Kino Lorber brings Dante’s Peak to 4K Ultra HD / Blu-ray in a two-disc combo pack, and the film shines in a new 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. Special features were ported over from previous editions, including an audio commentary by Donaldson, an isolated score, a making of documentary, a trailer, and a slipcover.
