The publicity's correct: the coast is toast all right, and the heat is headed your way.

This is a rousing erupter that wastes little time in setting up its action.

The Los Angeles tar pits explode in fireballs, spitting out an advancing tide of magma, while an even greater horror waits below.

'Hold on, baby, you'll be safe here,' says emergency chief Tommy Lee Jones, leaving daughter Gaby Hoffman in the car and adding to the line of classic film remarks no one but the speaker believes.

Special effects do pretty well all you could expect here, apart from a few cheesy fireball moments when it looks as though the film's been run backwards.

Otherwise, moments of sacrifice and heroism are well mixed into the general panic, in a film that proves a real goer from start to finish.