Summary:

Something has gone verplunkt with the Earth’s magnetic field.  Turns out this field is controlled by the constant spinning of the liquid magma at the center of the globe.  For reasons revealed late in the film, that liquid has stopped spinning and threatens the very existence of life on the planet.  It’s up to a crack team of astronauts and scientists to take a quick trip to the Earth’s core and jump start it.

Steve says:

I don’t know how much of this movie is based on solid scientific theory and how much is screenwriter-hatched hokum.  (I’m guessing a lot of it falls into the latter category). 

THE CORE is a standard issue disaster movie that was written pretty much by the numbers.  Still, there haven’t been an awful lot of disaster movies around lately, which is surprising giving Hollywood’s lemming-like instincts for story development coupled with the monstro success of TITANIC a few years ago.  So, not having seen this particular formula played out in a while, I found it entertaining, particularly in view of the fact that the filmmakers came up with a reasonably original disaster scenario.

Given the fact that the two leads are Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank, you know the producers made a cost-conscious decision to put the big bucks into special effects rather than actors’ salaries.  Indeed, it is those special effects that are the movie’s true stars. Just as we thrilled to the destruction of the White House in INDEPENDENCE DAY, so are we treated to a pretty bitchin’ rendition of Rome being decimated by a killer electrical storm.

Both Eckhart and Swank are solid actors, given their independent film pedigrees and they manage to pass themselves of as acceptable substitutes for Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts, even if they really are just working stiff actors who were doing their job.  When it comes to story, though, you’ll have to check your brains at the door and be willing to suspend your disbelief willingly and totally for up to two hours.

For one thing, take this business about the liquid magma having stopped dead in its tracks.  Doesn’t it seem to you as though the fact that the Earth itself is spinning would pretty much mandate that anything liquid inside it would also be kept whirling around?  So, we ignore physics and just sit back and say, “Okay, then.  Blow some shit up.”  That they do.  And they do it well.

If you’ve seen enough of these disaster epics, as I have, you begin to know just who is going to get killed and even in what order they will be dispatched.  (It’s a little like on the original Star Trek, when Kirk, Spock, McCoy and some anonymous crewman you’ve never seen before all beamed down to a planet.  It didn’t exactly take Carl Sagan to figure out who wasn’t coming back).

Speaking of the late Mr. Sagan, Stanley Tucci does a pretty funny riff on the character of a media star who also has some solid scientific credentials, even if his first priority is his next book.

Jon Amiel, who also directed the stylish Sean Connery thriller, ENTRAPMENT, keeps the story moving at a brisk pace, rendering us able to accept such balderdash  as the space shuttling making a safe crash landing on the cement bed of the Los Angeles river.

THE CORE isn’t something I would have gone to if Chris hadn’t been begging me to take him.  But having done so, I have to admit I was entertained.  The best reason for seeing THE CORE on the big screen rather than waiting for home video is the aforementioned destruction of Rome and the further trashing of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

The trick is to merely lower your expectations down somewhere around your ankles and you won’t be disappointed in anything about THE CORE.

 

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Chris says:

 THE MOVIE WAS GREAT!!!  I’m not sure if all of the information is true (like humongous geodes inside the earth’s mantle) but they made it believable.

My favorite part was when a super storm destroyed a city and left it in ruins. If you like action and/or science fiction this is the movie for you.

The acting was spectacular!  They made you feel like the Earth was really going to end. The special effects were not as good but were still great.  Especially when they were dodging diamonds the size of Cape Cod. The ship that was taking them to the core had to have had a little bit of designing. It looked really cool!  And in the end the movie ended up to be one of the best I’ve seen in a while.  I give THE CORE four lava-hot kernels.

 

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April 19, 2003