Tremblement de terre à San Francisco

Great TV-movie about the collapse of Interstate 880 during the '89 San Francisco quake. There is a wonderful cast of well-known character actors, including Ruben Blades, Scott Hylands and David Morse. The film combines archive footage with its own staged "collapse site", which looks a bit tacky at times, but certainly serves the purpose when we are between the layers, watching as medical teams try and pull survivors from the wreckage of their vehicles. There is a particularly closed-in atmosphere during these scenes, and together with the added effects of blasting horns and blinking turn signals, it seems all-too real at times.

Many of these made-for-TV disaster movies are notoriously poor and have quite a reputation, but I-880, as it is also known, breaks away from this mould to give us a compelling and touching real-life drama, with an especially emotional ending that is a bit of a kick in the face. Certainly worth a look if you can find it.