Dante's Peak.

• Author: Sharrett, Christopher

As if in anticipation of our apocalyptic yearnings at the end of the century, each time we turn around, the cinema offers us a new take on the disaster film. We already have seen the new spins on tornadoes and alien invasions; now, nature has another time-honored form of revenge upon a smug, self-satisfied human population in the form of erupting mountains. The recent "Dante's Peak" is a warm-up, along with a couple of made-for-TV lookalikes. for "Volcano," wherein a hapless Los Angeles faces yet another Armageddon as a long-dormant volcano combines forces with the San Andreas fault to turn L.A. into a postmodern Pompeii. A cursory glance tells us that there is nothing new about any of this.

"Dante's Peak" is a composite of the disaster cycles of the 1970s in ways that show how exhausted and imaginatively bankrupt the commercial entertainment industry currently is. The picture is a composite of "Jaws" and "Earthquake," with young, insightful scientists. who have roughly the position of the prophet Isaiah, warning the decadent order of its impending doom. Geologist Pierce Brosnan attempts to tell the prosperous Northwest region town that a previously sleepy and verdant mountaintop may bury their hopes for a burgeoning tourist industry. Similar to the Roy Scheider character in "Jaws," the Brosnan character is a battle-weary veteran who, like Captain Ahab, has suffered at the hand, of his foe. Like untold frontiersmen in westerns who "know Indians," he understands his opponent so well he comes close to identifying with it. Of course, this level of knowledge gives the hero a certain immunity. Viewers know he will not be killed, since the adversary seems to have a grudging respect and wants endless rematches (and sequels).

Blind self-interest

On the other side, we find the Ordinary Folk who, when not merely plain stupid and arrogant, are motivated by the self-interest that marks their community as a contemporary Sodom. Like the mayor and businesspeople of "Jaws" who want to keep the beaches open despite evidence of sharkfins in the surf, the commercial leaders of Dante's Peak (the town's name, with all its invocations of The Inferno) think the skiing business can't tolerate talk of lava flows.

Then, there is the Young Single Mother (Linda Hamilton), who immediately becomes smitten with the geologist's good looks and uncanny prescience. There is the usual soap-opera buildup, as all the petty travails of the town rapidly are reduced to rubble when...