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Film
'The Core' is rotten
Viewers beware: Below the surface of this sci-fi adventure about the Earth's core lurks a bad B movie.
By MARTY CLEAR
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 27, 2003
If you overlook the ludicrous premise, the massive logical lapses, the laughable special effects and the predictable plot, The Core might be an okay sci-fi adventure.
Except it would still be boring.
Let's start with the premise. Weird things start happening. Pacemakers fail in Chicago. Pigeons go berserk in London.
The U.S. military is immediately on the case. Because that's what the U.S. military does: investigate ornithological oddities in England.
Shadowy government figures force a scientist to come to Washington to give his input. Secrecy is of the utmost importance, so they grab him while he's teaching a class. (Calling on the phone to ask his opinion would apparently be out of the question.)
Soon, that scientist -- a world-renowned physicist who consistently mispronounces the word nuclear -- figures out what's happening. The Earth's liquid core has stopped spinning, and that has wreaked havoc with the planet's magnetic field.
More strange things happen. In true B-movie tradition, they happen only at major landmarks. When a bridge collapses, it's the Golden Gate Bridge. Massive electrical storms in Rome focus exclusively on the Coliseum and the Victor Emmanuel monument. The incident with the pigeons happens at Trafalgar Square. Nondescript parts of the world are apparently unscathed.
So the scientists build a ship that can bore its way to the Earth's core. They'll detonate nuclear bombs that will get the core spinning again and restore the magnetic field. Right.
On the ship are two scientists (played by Stanley Tucci and Aaron Eckhart) and a former astronaut (Hilary Swank), chosen because she's a brilliant navigator. (It apparently takes a brilliant navigator to find a way straight down into the ground.) There's also another former astronaut (Bruce Greenwood) who's on the mission because, well, they never really tell you why. Then there's the guy who built the ship (Delroy Lindo). And there's a French guy (Tcheky Karyo). (Neither is on board for any apparent reason.) So these six "terranauts" go to the core, where everything looks like a screensaver. On the surface, the magnetic field continues to deteriorate, apparently affecting everything but the terranauts' ship and the computers and communications systems the mission requires. (In fact, the terranauts are somehow able to communicate by radio to the surface when they're thousands of miles down.)
You can pretty much figure out what happens from there. If you care.
Director Jon Amiel (Entrapment) seems to realize what a mess the script is. He doesn't even try to craft a story. He substitutes sonic volume for dramatic intensity, and weird, shaky camera techniques for dramatic tension.
There are a few positives. The acting is actually quite good. Besides the stellar six-member crew (including Tucci, who has some great moments of bombast), the cast features the wondrous Alfre Woodard (wasted in a small role) and hot-commodity character actor DJ Qualls as the world's best computer hacker. And there are some nice moments of wry humor that complement the many unintended laughs.
But it hardly matters. This is a thriller with barely a tense moment, a sci-fi movie that doesn't fire the imagination.
The Next Karate Kid is no longer the most embarrassing entry on Hilary Swank's resume.
The Core
- Grade: D
- Director: Jon Amiel
- Writer: John Rogers
- Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo, Bruce Greenwood, Alfre Woodard.
- Rating: PG-13; violence, content, language
- Running time: 125 min.
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