The Core [DVD] [2003]

The plot is simple enough - the Earth is about to get cooked because the outer core has stopped spinning, which.....does anyone really care why? All you need to know is that a bunch of scientists have to get the the Earths core to set off some bombs in order to save the planet. We all know that in reality it can't be done, but hey, this is SciFi, so just accept it!

The reason this film works for me is quite simply the wonderful casting. Sure, there are no Hollywood superstars here, but those cast have excellent reputations as solid actors in their own right. As with so many good films, the chemistry between the actors is what draws you in, and helps you suspend your scepticism whilst the film lasts.

The film is choc full of cliche's:

The young, talented pilot out to prove a point to the older more experienced pilot (who gets killed)
The brilliant loner scientist
The "geeky" IT expert
The "celbrity" scientist and his unknown but equally brilliant ex-partner and there loathing of eachother
The plan that goes wrong
The self sacrifice in the name of the mission
The last minute repreive
(I was disappointed there was no faithful dog that sat at home waiting for the dead pilot, but that probably would have been too much)

You get the point - but the thing here is that they all work so well in the context of the film.

The CGI was excellent for the destruction scenes, but a little bit pants for the underground stuff, which would be one criticism.

All in all, a good film which you will probably watch more than once, and certainly worth a place in the collection of anyone interested in SciFi or disaster movies.

You really cannot type anything after you make a declaration like that. I can remember the first time I saw the trailer for "The Core," hearing this premise and turning to my wife to request that she provide to me, free of charge, a respite from sexual intercourse (only not in those words). Granted, I never took physics (or chemistry or biology) so my knowledge of rudimentary science is just about nil, but even I would think that not only would the core not stop spinning that if it did we would all be dead before we knew it had happened. We have been waiting for large objects from outer space to strike the earth in movies from "When Worlds Collide" to "Armageddon," but having global destruction come from the heavens we are now going the other way.

What stops you from totaly dismissing "The Core" is the cast. You have Aaron Eckhart as Dr. Josh Keyes, the first scientist to put together what is happening; Tchéky Karyo as Dr. Serge Leveque, the weapons expert who is not thinking about saving the entire planet but more his wife and kids; Delroy Lindo as Dr. Ed Brazzleton, who creates the technology that allows our merry little group to get to the center of the earth; Stanley Tucci as Dr. Conrad Zimsky, supposedly the smartest man on the planet (by his own admission); Bruce Greenwood as Col. Robert Iverson, space shuttle pilot and commander of the group; Hilary Swank as Major Rebecca Childs, the hot-shot navigator who still has something to learn; DJ Qualls as "Rat" Finch, the greatest computer hacker on the planet; Richard Jenkins as Gen. Thomas Purcell, in charge of the emergency project; and Alfre Woodard as Talma Stickley, head of mission control.

That is a pretty solid cast with Woodard the only one who is really wasted and every one of them totally buys into their role. They treat this stuff seriously and have these intense discussions as if they really were figuring out how to restart the core and save the planet, coming up with whatever plan in the alphabet is needed after each goes horribly wrong for some unsuspected reason. In an interview Qualls talks about how the science in the film is understandable. Not realistic or, say, scientific, but that you get what they are doing and why they are doing it as they go along. That is true. You can laugh at what this film comes up with for science, but you do understand what it is they think they are doing, even if you could not go out and explain it to somebody else two minutes later.

Director Jon Amiel ("Sommersby") has a reputation for emphasizing character and story over special effects, and that is indeed the case here. You can laugh at the story and what these characters are doing, especially when they are out wandering around outside their ship at the center of the earth, but I think you will find it difficult to laugh at the characters (well, okay, Tucci is asking for it throughout, but he is the film's "heavy"). However, we keep getting back to the story.

Clearly the makers of this film do not want to deal with the subject on a realistic level. The first deleted scene on the DVD is a touching moment when Eckhart's Dr. Keyes informs his two lab assistants that they have had a crush on each for a long time, gives them his credit card, and tells them to check into a hotel and order a bottle of champagne. He knows the word is going to end within 100 days and they run off, never seeing the tears in his eyes as he confronts the end of the world. But that scene gets cut because there is little in the film that deals with the terror of the end of the world. Instead we get guys quipping about funding emergency project to save the world should be done with a credit card rather than a check (you get mileage that way). The change in the credit card point in this movie says it all.

I know that this is supposed to be a science fiction in the grand tradition of those films from the 1950s and 1960s when smart people figure out what is wrong and smart people figure out how to solve the problem (e.g., "Them"). I know that this is, on several levels, simply "Fantastic Voyage" for this generation, and yet another part of the genre that insists that no matter how dire the circumstances, human ingenuity can save the day (unless it is a planet rather than an asteroid that is going to crash into Earth, in which case we draw lots and save a couple dozen people). I am also pretty convinced that all the science is purposefully absurd, but when I learned the nuclear devices had to be placed at the right spots within inches and exploded at the proper times within microsecond, my bubble of suspended disbelief popped. Ironically, the fact that the actors are so earnest and so good in their roles just made the absurd science seem all that more absurd. You can certainly enjoy "The Core" on some level, but it is probably safer to be prepared to be disappointed, even with the trailer giving fair warning.