The title pretty much speaks for itself. The mayor and the fire chief are having a big feud, but when an earthquake hits New york they put aside their differences and try to help their city. The chiefs daughter is trapped in a high school and the mayors daughter is trapped underground in the subway tunnels. The mayors daughter is a lawyer and she's trapped with her client whom she just helped walk free for murder charges and now that she's in this situation with him she begins to see maybe she helped free the wrong man. Other stories include a gangster wanna be trapped in a church basement with the majors mother. A woman who must get to a grade school and try to save her disabled son. A girl who is trying to get across town to find her mother and shes being helped by a Russian Cab driver. All kinds of little stories are rolled in to this almost 3 hour made for TV movie.I must say I have seen this about 3 times, not sure why as I never cared much for it, but I keep watching it every few years for some odd reason. It is very slow at times and it's predictable and the earthquake happens fast and the aftermath is most of the movies story. I think great disaster movies need action and excitement all the way through in order to work. Hated the direction, I hate when a director shakes the camera to incorporate movement, and way too many slow motion shots here. There is often scale models used in place of subways, buildings and the statue of liberty and the directors ratio of his camera location verses the model is horrible.Acting is full of a bunch of nobodies and has beens. Tom Skeritt, Charles Dutton, Jennifer Gardner, Cicely Tyson among others, Frederick Weller playing a Russian was the best acting job here.The movie is OK but just not anything you haven't seen before in these types of films. It had a very basic feel to it which came up short with excitement - 3/10 starsone creepy line said by a helicopter reporter "the twin towers are still standing"

This latest entry into straight-to-TV videos sees Tom Skerrit running for his life when disaster hits New York City. Another predictable, pretentious natural disaster "thriller" made for TV, "Earthquake in New York" does nothing we have not seen before, and accomplishes zip.Boring from start to finish.1.5/5 stars -John Ulmer

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.

AFTERSHOCK: EARTHQUAKE IN NEW YORK (1999) **1/2Starring: Tom Skerritt, Charles S. Dutton, Sharon Lawrence, Cicely Tyson, Fred Weller, Jennifer Garner, Lisa Nicole Carson, and Rachel Ticotin Director: Mikael Salomon Running time: Unknown Not Rated (equivalent to a PG-13, containing disaster violence)By Blake French:(The following may contains a few minor spoilers)If I were to say that by the end of "Aftershock: Earthquake in New York" every problem in the picture will be solved, you would have no idea of how literal I was being. The production has so many independent characters, complicated situations, and internal and external conflicts, by the halfway point of the movie, I lost track of whose who, and what's happening and where to what characters. Most of the time it is a good thing to have a variety of characters, but "Aftershock: Earthquake in New York," pushes the audience over the edge."Aftershock: Earthquake in New York" details an earthquake that erupts in the big apple and the mayhem is causes for separate groups of devastated people. Actually, this production would be more reasonably called "Aftermath: The Horrors of an Earthquake When it Erupts in a Big City" because it is more about the situations encountered after the quake than the existent tremor itself. During the earthquake, we see museums break apart, skyscrapers collapse, streets crumble, a subway train wreak, a bathroom disassemble, and even get to see Lady Liberty fall flat on her face. All the special effects are well done and convincing. The movie does make us believe there is an earthquake is occurring.The film wastes time during the first fifty minutes, sparring us the usual momentum build-up and developing the characters individually, so that we can to care about them when the disaster hits. Good attempt by the filmmakers. But their failure has already been decided. There are just to many characters and complex sub-plots to weave this unorganized, fragmented movie together. We meet Emily Lincoln (Cicely Tyson), a religious woman on her death bed while trying to teach a young, rebellious teenage boy lessons of life, Thomas Ahearn (Tom Skerritt), a family man having tiffs with the city mayor, Lincoln (Charles Dutton), who also has a family in danger. Then we are introduced to a defense attorney Evie Lincoln, (Lisa Nicole Carson), and her client charged with cold blooded murder. They get into a subway wreak (in a tunnel where the lights are still strongly working after a massive earthquake and countless other complications have occurred). A foreign cab driver named Nicholai Karvovsky (Fred Weller) is also involved with a young woman, I forget who and why. Also covered in "Aftershock: Earthquake in New York" are marital problems, legal issues, family crisis, financial necessities, political outbursts, and even medical disasters, all which are related to each other, but distract us from the main events the story centers on.There are a few unconventional surprises contained in the story line, but for the most part, this is one long journey in circles. After the earthquake hits, we expect the movie to build up tension for an aftershock, thus the title "Aftershock." But we just don't get that at all here, but receive a rehearse in an event that took place just an hour earlier. It is like rewinding a video and watching the same scene twice. The actual disaster itself couldn't help but recycling elements from past motion pictures such as "Volcano," "Asteroid," and "Daylight."The picture is directed by Mikael Salomon, whose previous work includes the also mediocre "Hard Rain" (1998) and " A Far Off Place" (1993). Analyzing his past movies, I think Salomon has a tendency to cover a lot of material on screen, but the material doesn't have much of an impact on an audience. In "Aftershock: Earthquake in New York" just about everything happens except someone answering the question of why there would be a major tremor in the big apple in the first place.