THE CORE

By: Abbie Bernstein
Review Date: Friday, March 28, 2003

It's time to get in the Wayback Machine not, it should be added, because THE CORE itself is especially old-fashioned as disaster movies go, but because to understand the film's effect, it helps to recall the way the genre felt in the days of yore. Remember how movies like EARTHQUAKE and THE TOWERING INFERNO felt when they first came out yeah, you knew they were kind of campy even then, but you could go along for the ride without going uncontrollably MST3K on them.

Well, that's what THE CORE is like. In the years to come, it will probably seem as completely bananas as old Irwin Allen offerings do at present, but right now, the absurdity balances amiably with the spectacle. Not as testosterone-laden as ARMAGEDDON and not as tear-jerky as DEEP IMPACT but reminiscent of both, THE CORE eschews asteroids for something a bit more unusual.

After a number of peculiar events fatalities caused by the split-second simultaneous failure of pacemakers, swarms of crazed pigeons, etc. the alarmed U.S. government secretly pulls together a team of scientists to determine what's happening. Bad news: the Earth's core has stopped rotating, which will cause the world to be susceptible to microwave radiation, which in turn will destroy all life on the planet within a year. Possible good news: it may be possible to restart the rotation by sending a team burrowing into the world's core, where it's hoped massive nuclear detonation will get things rolling again.

THE CORE's beats

are more or less what we'd expect. There is heroism, despair, treachery, a big third-act revelation that's surprising only in its details (no disaster movie worth its rubble has yet been made without some human culpability in the story mix), a smidgen of romance, some sharp comedy lines and, of course, lots of disaster spectacle. There are some cool, trippy visual effects, courtesy of vfx supervisor Gregory F. McMurry, as the "terranauts" cruise through the molten heart of the planet, a journey through inner space that in some ways recalls FANTASTIC VOYAGE more than JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH.

The screenplay by Cooper Lane and John Rogers is a good bellwether for how far the disaster genre has evolved it's got some genuinely hip and funny moments and clever notions mixed in with the inevitable earnestness. Director Jon Amiel has done some very astute casting, especially frontman Aaron Eckhart as lead scientist Josh Keyes Eckhart invests his character with a fluidity and a sense of the ridiculous, so that we take to Josh and roll with him, rather than sense any resistance from the performer. Hilary Swank as a NASA pilot likewise plays her role as a human being. Delroy Lindo and Tcheky Karyo contribute a lot of warmth to the proceedings, while Stanley Tucci is undeniably entertaining if a bit theatrical as an egomaniacal scientist involved with the mission.

THE CORE is neither the best nor the worst of its breed. It gives us what we've come to expect from the genre in a form dictated partly by the traditions of its subject matter and partly by the pop culture of the day. It's calculated but still watchable.

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