Aftershock: Tremblement de terre à New York

upon turning on my television set to relax with a fine made-for-tv movie, i stumbled upon this. perhaps it was fate, or perhaps it was simply nothing more than a bit of luck on my behalf, but i must say, first and foremost that i was immediately blown away. the movie drew me in with its top-notch special effects and intriguing character situations--needless to say, for approximately 170 minutes i forgot entirely of any relatives or close friends i may have. instead, i was living the adventure--no, i WAS the adventure. and i can, with the truest of intentions say, that while watching this movie i was the happiest i have ever been in my entire life. and, more than likely, it was the happiest i will ever be. even now, on dreary afternoons when i find myself alone with nothing to do, i like to sit back with a fine, cool glass of lemonade and compile stanza upon stanza of poetry in my head encompassing the various scenes and events, making the movie ever-mine and something that will live forever within my memories.

This movie was shown here (Israel) on the Hallmark channel in Dec 01. As a former New Yorker, and watching it in this post-9/11 era, it was truly eerie, especially since in this film, one of the few sites left standing and untouched was... the Twin Towers.

This movie is based on a novel by one of NY's most familiar faces, former NBC newscaster, and my 'regular' source of info in my NY days, Chuck Scarborough. Perhaps only a real New Yorker could have imagined and foretold such scenes and, knowing the essence of a true New Yorker, written such speeches that eventually proved so prophetic and so amazingly close to reality. Besides the story and text, the scenes and special effects were awesome (even though you *know* looking at them that it's not real).

This will no doubt prove to be the first in many similar disaster films that will be made about NY, be they natural or terrorist, but since this was done three years "before," it makes it more prophecy than mere fiction, and worth seeing.

The disaster films of the 1990's excluding of course " Volcano" (1997 Tommy Lee Jones.) are just downright bad the special effects are horrible and the characters are pathetic. If you are going to make a disaster film you need to make them epic. If you are going to make a movie about an Eartthquake in new York then for god's sake show New York getting destroyed. The Earthquake sequence in this movie leaves you feeling jipped when it is all over with, and then it leaves you with pathetic characters that you don't care much about for the rest of the film. Another major problem with this film and most of the disaster films of the 90's is that there is absolutely no build up what so ever. If you watch the disaster films of the 1970's there was always a feeling for the first twenty minutes or so of those films that something really bad was going to happen, an impending doom that got you more involved in those films. That is certainly not the case nowadays and especially with " Earthquake In New York". If you want to see a good disaster film most definetly watch " The Towering Inferno" or " Earthquake" and if you are interested in a more updated disaster film catch " Volcano" with Tommy Lee Jones that movie truly delivers the goods.

This is an excellent movie for someone who has never experienced an earthquake; as we all know one does not last for 15 minutes. If a 15 minute earthquake would have struck New York, it would be in total ruin and not have buildings standing. The movie also failed to touch on the happenings of the other boroughs, Bronx and Staten Island. The acting and cast is well played and very believable. I will see this movie again though and do recommend it to others.

OK. The genre "disaster film" genrally doesn't mean earth-shattering, brilliant writing. What these movies are all about is the ACTION-something that, i'm pleased to see, the other commenters on this page realize. This movie, i think, has some better writing than others. It sidesteps cliched characters to a certain extent...for example, the mayor is sympathetic and really NOT a mad power-monger. It was refreshing for me to see a person in a position of power in an action movie attempt not to abuse such power for his/her own interests. All the other characters are also appealing...except one. As for the direction, Mikael Salomon truly knows how to stage action...it's all about camera angles. In this film, he uses these to great effect...my personal favorite being the one he uses when 2 characters escape out from under a truck collapsing underground in the nick of time. all-in-all, this is an entertaining movie...and a worthy entry into the disaster-film genre. in fact, i like this better than VOLCANO, a theatrical release from a few years back. i give this movie 3 out of 4 stars.