Core, The (2003)

Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo
Director: Jon Amiel

Rating: PG-13

Studio: Paramount

Review Posted: 3.28.03

Spoilers: Minor

By Sara M. Fetters.

"Finding The Core Not Worth the Effort"

When the United States discovers a foreign country unfavorable to it is secretly developing a weapon capable of causing seismic events and devastating earthquakes any where in the world, it seems prudent that they quickly develop the same. Using the Cold War ideology of MAD – mutually assured destruction – the US races to build and activate their version of this weapon, nicknamed "Project Destiny."

Unbeknownst to the scientists, Destiny’s pure electronic shockwaves sent directly through the earth’s layers have caused damage to its outer core causing it to stop spinning. With no spinning core, the Earth is suddenly at the mercy of fierce solar winds and devastating electrical storms. In a matter of months, the face of the Earth will become a barren wasteland and all life currently living upon it will cease to exist.

Enter Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart, In the Company of Men, Erin Brokovich). The first to discover what is going on, he and a team of elite scientists have only three months to find a solution. With Destiny creator Dr. Conrad Zimsky by his side (Stanley Tucci, Maid in Manhattan, Big Night) and riding in a ship built by scientist Dr. Edward Brazleton (Delroy Lindo, Heist) piloted by NASA astronauts Rebecca Childs (Hilary Swank, Boys Don’t Cry, Insomnia) and Col. Robert Iverson (Bruce Greenwood, Below, The Sweet Hereafter), Keyes and his team will journey to the center of the Earth in an attempt to get the core spinning once again. HG Wells would certainly be proud.

Director Jon Amiel’s (Entrapment) new film The Core looks like a promising enough disaster flick on paper. Featuring a cast of acclaimed and veteran character actors and a relatively intriguing premise, The Core could be the fix end-of-world disaster junkies are craving.

Sadly, that’s not the case. Cooper Lane and Jon Rogers’ (American Outlaws) script is paint-by-numbers at best and Amiel directs as if his attention is firmly rooted somewhere else, like on his next project. There is nothing going on in The Core I haven’t seen time and time again, from The Poseidon Adventure to Earthquake to Armageddon.

To be nice, it is obvious Amiel and company is trying to steer as far away from the Michael Bay template of disaster movie filmmaking as possible. The movie is relatively devoid of the quick-cut editing and short attention span techniques employed in Armageddon, and while that’s a good thing, slowing the movie down every five minutes for a philosophical discussion on where humanity is heading does get a bit old after the first four or five times.

Don’t blame the actors for The Core’s shortcomings. Eckhart is solid as the forthright Keyes, having excellent chemistry with Swank. Greenwood has a stoic presence that garners immediate empathy, while Lindo and Tucci have a great give and take genteel animosity that serves their scenes well. DJ Qualls (Road Trip) does what he can with a silly hacker character assigned the task of keeping this adventure to save the planet a secret and the great French character actor Tchéky Karyo (La Femme Nikita) has some nice moments as Keyes’ best friend and the ship’s weapons technician, while Alfre Woodard (K-PAX, Mumford) is wasted as the group’s mission leader running things from a control room.

In the end, The Core’s biggest crime is that it is boring. Sure, both Rome and San Francisco blow up well and glimpses inside the Earth’s mantle and core are relatively interesting, but this movie is so intent on hitting all the disaster movie clichés ever known that the idea of a new or original thought must seem like a foreign concept to the film’s team of writers. In fact, The Core is the type of film where all you have to know is the reverse order of the cast list to figure out whom will die next, and the thought that either of the movie’s main characters could perish isn’t even a remote possibility. At least Armageddon had the guts to kill Bruce Willis and Deep Impact knew enough to slaughter off its entire rescue team in Earth-saving glory.

I appreciate Amiel’s attempts to make a character driven disaster movie. I just wish next time he’d mix up the template a little to keep it interesting.

Rating: 2 out of 4

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