Dante’s Peak on DVD

Here’s a popcorn flick where a whole mountain blows up real good, with DTS digital sound!

Pierce Brosnan is Harry Dalton (no relation to Timothy, Brosnan’s “Bond” predecessor), a vulcanologist working for the US Geological Survey who’s sent to Dante’s Peak (in beautiful Washington State, we think) to basically rain on their parade.

Well, that may not be fair. He’s sent to investigate some ominous, but probably harmless, readings and he shows up just when the lovely little town is putting on the Ritz, accepting an award as the second best small place to live in the US (doesn’t that make them the top losers in the “Best Places” contest?) and kissing up to a businessman who’s thinking of investing in the community and creating much-needed jobs.

But Harry sees a dark cloud around that silver lining and, expert and consummate professional that he is, sounds the alarm, thereby freaking out the town’s council led by attractive divorcee Mayor Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton).

Did he go off half cocked, though? When his cohorts, and his boss, arrive to set up monitoring equipment around the volcano, they find nothing untoward and rescind Harry’s warning - or at least downgrade it from an orange to a yellow alert (in the parlance of today’s homeland security warnings). This rubs Harry the wrong way and he has the “case” taken from his briefcase and is sent on vacation.

He doesn’t go, of course, and as we all know he’s been right all along and this spectacular mountain is about to go blooey and spew massive amounts of magma, ash, dust, mud, rocks and what have you, all over the lovely town of Dante’s Peak.

This is good, or we’d have felt mighty ripped off after having gone into the flick expecting a late 90’s version of the venerable disaster movie.

And we aren’t disappointed. Though there are some silly bits (for instance, an acid lake that destroys a boat propeller but not Brosnan’s jacket) they’re fortunately few and they don’t really get in the way of the fun. Besides, at its worst, Dante’s Peak is far, far better than The Swarm, possibly the worst of the disaster flicks. And it seems that only the people who die, in order to serve the Gods of Drama and atone for their lack of vision, actually deserve to.

The special effects are nothing short of outstanding. Not only have they brought the volcano violently and spectacularly to life, but they completely destroyed Wallace, Idaho (the beautiful community in which most of the film was shot) and left the whole valley under a blanket of volcano poop. The miniature work is terrific, too - in fact it never looks like miniatures. Kudos to Digital Domain et al for their efforts.

And since it’s the effects we’re there to see (those who aren’t merely watching to see Brosnan or Hamilton, of course), they give us plenty of them. In fact, most of the entire second half of the film takes us through various parts of eruption, from the opening salvo of a huge and awesome ash cloud ascending above the peak as the mountain clears its throat in preparation for a really good belch, to the eventual all hell breaking loose of the full eruption.

Brosnan and Hamilton are both good in their roles and they’re helped by a script that’s better than this genre of film often sees. They undoubtedly know it’s the effects that are the real stars, but they’re given enough to do and enough meat in the script to let them take a back seat with clear conscience.

The DVD is presented in anamorphic widescreen, 16x9 TV compatible, and though the picture is a tad grainy for most of the film the colors are rich and the spectacular scenery and action isn’t affected.

Audio is DTS 5.1 surround and, as might be expected, it’s very good. Your subwoofer will love this movie! The surround channels are used sparingly, though when they’re brought into the mix it’s very effective. The DTS contributes excellent fidelity; many consider DTS to be superior to Dolby Digital and we tend to agree, though Dolby Digital is louder.

If you don’t have a DTS decoder (and most recent home theater systems will have one) you only get “old fashioned” Dolby Surround, so if you’re in that boat you’re better off getting the other release that has Dolby Digital 5.1 surround.

There are no extras on this version of Dante’s Peak.

But what a blast, in every sense of the word!

Dante’s Peak, from Universal Home Video
109 min. anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), 16x9 TV compatible, DTS 5.1 Surround
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, Charles Hallahan
Produced by Gale Anne Hurd, Joseph M. Singer,
Written by Leslie Bohem, Directed by Roger Donaldson

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