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A Paramount release. Written by Cooper Layne and John Rogers; directed by Jon Amiel; starring Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank. Released to DVD on September 9, 2003. 
In the summer of 1998, Paramount released a rather scattershot disaster film, Deep Impact, that focused on the efforts of the American government to deal with an impending global catastrophe that could effectively end life on earth. Five years later, Paramount’s at it again, gracing audiences with The Core, a film that follows the above plot description verbatim. And while it’s not particularly surprising that a studio would sink to this level of creative depravity, it is interesting to note that absolutely no lessons were learned from the first go around. Where Deep Impact features a host of shallow characters who had little if any chemistry between one another and a plot line that quizzically concentrates on the more emotional interactions between the aforementioned shallow characters, so does The Core. The problem is simple: thanks to the meddling of the United States government, the earth’s core has stopped spinning. This causes all sorts of poorly computer-generated storm systems to pop up across America and allows supercharged microwaves from the sun to pass through the magnetic field around the earth and burn cities to the ground. The solution isn’t as simple: a group of scientists (Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Bruce Greenwood, Delroy Lindo, Tcheky Karyo and Stanley Tucci) will create a ship out of "unobtanium", a metal that can withstand up to 9,000° Fahrenheit temperatures, use supersonic lasers to dig 3,000 miles down through the earth’s mantle to the core where they will set off a series of large nuclear bombs, and return to the surface. Unfortunately, with the notable exception of Tucci, The Core’s cast plays the material extremely straight; Swank and Greenwood seem particularly out of place here. Tucci, however, recognizes the folly of playing it realistically and hams it up superbly in the role of Dr. Zimsky, the physicist you love to hate. The highlight of the movie comes after the would-be heroes realize that their plan as strategized is not going to work. When Dr. Keyes (Eckhart) suggests a plan B that consists of "somehow" jump- starting the earth’s core, Zimsky flies off the handle. Arms flailing wildly, he maniacally voices his opinion that the idea to "somehow" solve the earth’s problem could be the worst idea he’s ever heard. "Somehow?" Zimsky rages. And he is promptly punched and knocked out by Lindo’s Brazzleton, quickly ending the one slight bit of amusement that The Core offered to viewers. With such second and third rate special effects and so many poor, poor choices throughout, The Core genuinely lives up to its disaster film billing.
chris neumer yes, it's true: The inner core of the earth is made up of solid iron and nickel. |
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