The Core (2003) - 4/10

I do like a disaster movie and you can’t knock one that gets stuck right in. Well you can, but I won’t. If you’re here to find fault, you’re in the wrong place. This movie is littered with faults, but that’s not the point, the point is to have fun, eat your popcorn and watch the world burn. Sorry I got a bit dark there, but the world burning is a feature. The question is, is dumb fun enough? We’re in America, of course, where Josh (Aaron Eckhart), a science teacher, is dragged out of the classroom to save the world… it’s always a teacher isn’t it. What’s he saving the world from though? Well people are dying, birds are swarming erratically, astronaut, Beck (Hilary Swank) crash lands the space shuttle in LA. Josh knows what’s happening, the earths core has stopped spinning and all sorts of electromagnetic chaos is afoot, along with the imminent death of the entire planet’s population. Why, he doesn’t know, but self-serving government bad guy science dude, Zimsky (Stanley Tucci) does. Anyway, more important is the solution, made possible by renegade mad scientist, Braz (Delroy Lindo), who’s not only built a laser in the desert that will eat through rock, but also a new material strong enough to withstand anything. You see where this is going. Dig a hole to the core and kickstart it before, like I said earlier, the world burns. Short on bravado it is not and it could be serious stuff, but instead it’s light and breezy. With a bombastic score, comedy quips and a whole host of stereotypes, see DJ Qualls, as super-hacker, Rat. It’s a bit like Independence Day, but not as good. It’s needlessly complicated, but thin on detail. The acting isn’t as strong, in fact in places, large places, it’s bloody awful. The effects are a bit ropey, but the story is okay and if there’s one thing films like this do well, it’s yee-haw action! But again is this enough. All goes implausibly to plan to begin, but we wouldn’t have much of a film if everything just worked, plus we wouldn’t have the tease of some Jules Verne stuff that results when they find themselves getting stuck somewhere in the earths mantle. It’s all quite predicable, the ensemble cast allowing for the expected loses en route, but there’s a good scene with the Golden Gate Bridge and it’s quite gratifying watching Stanley Tucci get punched in the face. There could actually have been a genuinely good disaster movie here, but it pisses all its power away in a bloated second act and runs out of any sense of peril and purpose. So no, dumb fun and popcorn action isn’t enough. It’s pretty terrible, but I didn’t hate it, I just won’t be watching it again and I wouldn’t really recommend anyone does either.

4/10