Based on the 1988 earthquake that devastated numerous villages and wiped the town of Spitak from the face of the Earth, 'Earthquake' should have been a dramatic account of those fateful events.
Instead, the director attempted to make this a Hollywood style movie by adding a comic relief character, characters with uncalled for attitude issues, and a gang of thieves to spice up the story, I suppose. The film would have done much better without the thieves. Sometimes the back stories overshadowed the issues at hand. What did the car accident in the beginning of the movie have to do with anything? They should have concentrated more on the earthquake itself, and the aftermath.
I didn't find the characters very compelling and they also didn't do a great job in introducing the characters in the first place. I knew straight away the earthquake would last about five minutes or so, that it would be impressive, and that the remainder of the film would revolve around the aftermath. I was right, and that's what I wanted to see. Pity the characters ruined much of the film. Some characters did the strangest things considering their circumstances, with unnatural dialogue. I wanted to see the characters unite in the face of a tragedy, as they would in real life, but they opted for Hollywood-style cliched characters and situations instead. Pity.
The film has a beautiful score, and there are some truly fantastic scenes. The earthquake was obviously CGI, but it was very well done. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the film; I did. It just could have been that much better...
