Susan Granger’s review of “The Core” (Paramount Pictures)
Talk about rushing the popcorn picture season! Jon Amiel’s sci-fi fantasy is just the kind of averting-Armageddon disaster flick that’s usually released around Memorial Day. This cosmic survival story begins with a series of inexplicable phenomena: pigeons lose the ability to navigate, creating panic in London’s Trafalgar Square, and pacemakers suddenly stop working in Boston, causing people to drop dead in the street. San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge collapses and Rome’s Coliseum crumbles. Egad, what’s happening to our Earth? Well, it seems the electromagnetic field, which shields us from deadly solar radiation, is collapsing because the planet’s inner core has stopped rotating. And if rotation doesn’t resume, we’ll all be extinct. And it’s all because some nasty government agents were mucking around with Mother Nature! Coming to the rescue are an adventurous geophysicist (Aaron Eckhart), his celebrated egomaniacal colleague (Stanley Tucci), a French atomic weapons expert (Tcheky Karyo), a computer hacker prankster (DJ Qualls) and another geophysicist (Delroy Lindo) who has designed an experimental, laser-powered earth-burrower. Piloted by “terranauts” (Bruce Greenwood, Hilary Swank), these intrepid, if idiotic, heroes travel deep into the bowels of the earth. Above-ground, their trials and travails are monitored by mission control personnel (Alfre Woodard, Richard Jenkins). Screenwriters Cooper Layne and John Rogers propel the plot, as one-after-another, the explorers succumb. Can Earth be saved? Who will emerge alive? Do you care? On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Core” is an absurd, escapist 6. It’s such a no-brainer and so ridiculous that it’s campy – but I have my doubts whether that was intentional.
