calvinnme ... so I'm being more than generous for the cinematography, sound, and special effects (they do give out Oscars for these after all) and raising it to 3/10, and still I'm feeling very generous given it is neither Christmas nor my birthday. I thought this thing had been embarrassingly and quietly buried by the networks a decade ago, and there it was today on a cable channel! That I actually pay for! This thing is a camp classic that seems to aspire to be something in the vein of "Independence Day", except this film does not have Will Smith and manages to make that 1996 film look like Citizen Kane in comparison. A bunch of earthquakes strike up and down the west coast making Dr. Samantha Hill (Kim Delaney), "an intellectual earthquake expert" - do they actually give out such degrees and job titles? - believe that there is an even bigger earthquake coming. She manages to keep a straight face spouting lines like "These are not from our fault. They are from the faults affected by our fault." Hey this dialogue is somebody's fault! She predicts a "big one" will come and lop off a piece of the entire west coast UNLESS...they follow her cunning plan. Of course this involves nuclear warheads planted all along the west coast and therefore a massive migration away from the west coast for everybody. And we must have a tent hospital with lots of doctors out in the desert encampments being forced to make life and death decisions, acting like they have never had to do this before. Are these guys all podiatrists or something? But I digress.This thing drags on for four hours so we need lots of interpersonal relationships that need healing, including a father/daughter pair that I didn't recognize until today. Hey, that's Kaley Cuoco as the daughter when she was only 17, three years before "Big Bang Theory", here in a film in the tradition of Irwin Allen, who ironically believed in the theory that any film with a big enough bang is worthwhile entertainment! Oh, and then there is Jeff Bridges as the president, who proves he still has that common touch by playing basketball with Fred Ward's character, who although he is the FEMA director, actually gets his hands dirty in the disaster. Oh well, at least he wasn't at some horse show at the time. See Hurricane Katrina and FEMA director Michael Brown for reference.Well after four hours of sitting through this I will tell you that "the movie ends with a big explosion". It would have to, else there is really no payoff. I'm going to make you sit through the entire thing to learn anything more. If you must. Not recommended for anything but beer bong or drinking game enhanced laughter.

victorio_jeetda i am not here to take or make the mistake regarding MARTIAL LAW ...OR FEDERAL LAW but all i want to say is that i liked this movie very much.i don't care what other thinks about the movie but i can't find any thing stupid about the movie from the very beginning.i don't know why people watch movie , just for the entertainment or passing their view to others that.. look gentleman, i have seen this movie and i have collected some errors for you so that u be careful before make your mind to watch it.i have liked the graphics regarding collapse aftermath the earth quack or during it specially during the last 45 minute , i can assure u that u never gonna take your fat ass off the seat.sorry if hart some 1....!!!!

Willman247 I have seen this movie once, but I just don't understand how any of the things that happen in the movie are physically possible, because they probably aren't. Let's see, there is a 7.9 Earthquake in Seattle, a man happens to be able to perform stunts while riding a bike down the streets and tries to out run the Space Needle and also manages to stay on his bike and ride it like there is no shaking at all. But this is only the beginning of the unrealistic stuff you see in the film. Later in Reading, California an 8.4 Earthquake occurs and a rift opens up into the ground and you also see a train. Now instead of having the hole open up and swallow the train right there, they decide to use a even funnier method and have it exactly parallel with the tracks then eventually have gravity pull the train in, also you might probably notice that the train is going the exact same speed as the earthquake to. Later in San Francisco a 9.2 Earthquake occurs causing the Golden Gate bride to collapse and what do you see, people standing up and running. If a 8.0 earthquake occurred in real life people would be immediately thrown from the ground. But the height of the unrealistic story plot is when the 10.5 earthquake hits, and practically destroys everything in California, but everything around the state is almost completely unharmed how do you explain this. Even tough they didn't do a good job with the realism it is kind of fun to watch and the science isn't as bad as the movie science in Core.

kxok630 Very entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons. It's a natural disaster story predicated on the debunked idea that residents of the west coast of the U.S. will one day be swimming in the Pacific where their front yards used to be. Overlooking the film's goofs for the sake of artistic license becomes impossible as the nonsense keeps coming like aftershocks.But even sillier is how this movie presents its plot-hole-infested story. Jerky camera movement is used to simulate earthquake motion. Only problem is, they used the jerky camera business even when there was no quake. Characters are all loud and annoying dimwits. The toy cars they use on the chicken-wire model "Golden Gate Bridge" scene are outrageously funny. The numbskull who runs away from a crashing tower on a bicycle. But my personal favorite is the infamous "Fault line fissure chasing a train down the tracks" sequence. It literally follows the wake of the train, even turning corners, moving just slightly faster than the train as it stalks its prey, finally swallowing it up. Then, the instant it catches its lunch, it abruptly stops. If I had laughed any harder, I would have needed to be hooked to emergency oxygen.How to fight the quakes? Nuke the fault lines, of course. As if this premise wasn't ludicrous enough, the cartoonish CGI graphics utilized in the final sequence, along with where the advancing fissure stops (literally inches from a hero, after travelling over 100 miles), were the final straw.A sense of humor is all that's required to watch this.