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We humans have had this strange urge to visit the center (or centre if you are British) of the Earth for a very long time. From Greek times we have the story of Orpheus traveling to the Underworld and attempting to rescue his wife Eurydice from Hades, and he almost succeeds (you may recall that he was forbidden to look at her until they got back above ground). More recently you have Bugs Bunny traveling to China via a tunnel through the Earth. Then there is the classic film Journey To The Center Of The Earth, which is based on a Jules Verne novel. So you see, we have had a fascination for what is beneath our feet for quite some time. But now Hollywood needs to take us there to save the planet (well actually Hollywood just wants to make a buck), and we end up with an underground version of Armageddon, but without a big time action star or a hit song. Oddly enough the film starts in Boston where dozens of people keel over and die within a short distance of each other. We are told that they all died when their pacemakers stopped working. The US military is concerned that our enemies may have developed some sort of electromagnetic weapon of mass destruction, hence they call in two leading scientists on electromagnetic fields and weapons to determine if this incident was an attack. Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart, Possession) is a leading scientist of the Earth’s electromagnetic fields and geology in general, while Dr. Serge Leveque (Tchéky Karyo, Kiss of the Dragon) is the leading scientist of electromagnetic weapons. These two determine that the incident was not an attack, so the military closes the case, but Dr. Keyes is still curious as to what caused this in the first place. Soon other strange incidents begin to happen around the world that involve electromagnetic fields including birds flying violently into objects in mass and the space shuttle crash landing in LA. Eventually Keyes comes up with the answer, but wants to get confirmation from another top scientist in the field, Dr. Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci, Maid in Manhattan). He checks the data and comes to the same conclusion, the Earth’s core has stopped spinning, thus the protective electromagnetic field that it generates around the planet has started to collapse. This means that the life on Earth will be gone within a year due to electromagnetic storms and eventually by cooking from solar radiation. The government doesn’t like this so they hatch a plan to journey to the center of the planet using a special machine being built by mad scientist Dr. Ed Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo, The One). Dr. Keyes is put in charge of the project with Dr. Zimsky in a secondary role (which he loathes). The two then assemble a group to pilot this craft to the center of the Earth where they will detonate nuclear bombs to restart the spinning of the core. The group consists of Keyes, his pal Serge, Zimsky, space shuttle pilot Major Rebecca Childs (Hilary Swank, Insomnia), shuttle Commander Richard Iverson (Bruce Greenwood, Thirteen Days), and Dr. Brazzelton. Back above ground they recruit super-hacker Rat (DJ Qualls, The New Guy) to keep any news about the Earth’s problem and the project from reaching the public, so as to not cause any widespread panic. Well, eventually they begin their journey, which is where the real action begins. Some others in this Jon Amiel directed film are Alfre Woodard, Ray Galletti, Tom Scholte, Rekha Sharma, Eileen Pedde, Christopher Shyer, Dion Johnstone, and Richard Jenkins as the predictably stubborn general. Cooper Layne and John Rogers wrote this strangely humorous film. The Core seemed to be more comedy and adventure than thriller. I’m sure part of this comes from writer John Rogers, who got his start on the Cosby show. Another part of this would be that predictability is a big problem if you are mimicking another film. Just like in Armageddon you have a love story tied in, heroes dying, and the key to saving humanity is the use of nuclear bombs (I’ve had enough with the whole nuclear weapons irony thing). But unlike Armageddon, you cannot actually believe this whole scenario. The filmmakers had to start making shit up as they went to get their heroes to the middle of the planet. I don’t know if their science is accurate on the Earth’s electromagnetic fields, but this part of the movie did seem believable even if the science is incorrect. So in one hand we have poor believability, a lack of suspense, some poor CGI animations, and the feeling that you’ve seen this before, while in the other hand we have some good action and good laughs. This adds up to a not so good movie and a score of five couches out of ten. That’s all folks.
Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:46:13 AM Click Here to get back into frames.
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