The Core is like one of those Fizz candies. There’s a brittle surface of sci-fi premise and save-the-world adventure plot, and a few effervescent special effects that provide a brief sensory thrill once you bite it, but after that quick burst of fizzy stuff wears off, you’re left with nothing but a hollow centre and an upset stomach.
The reason for the save-the-world adventure plot is that the earth’s molten outer core has stopped spinning, and the resultant deterioration of our planet’s electromagnetic field is causing all sorts of weird “events” to happen. Early on, a tranquil scene of people feeding pigeons in London’s Trafalgar Square turns into an outtake from Hitchcock’s The Birds. Later, things get worse—mainly so we can be treated to a thoroughly unconvincing sequence in which some of Rome’s more important historical monuments get obliterated by the mother of all lightning storms.
The solution? First assemble a crew of “terranauts,” including a nice-guy geophysics professor (Aaron Eckhart), a capable but in-experienced astronaut (Hilary Swank), an eminent but exceedingly arrogant nuclear physicist (Stanley Tucci), an eccentric genius weapons engineer (Delroy Lindo), and French actor Tchéky Karyo, whose main contribution to the team is to die early. Next step: hire a pop-culture-saturated hacker named Rat to—get this—use a virus to prevent anyone from leaking knowledge of the impending apocalypse over the Internet. Then build an earth-ship that looks like the Batmobile crossed with a huge vibrator, stock it with a bunch of nukes designed to kick-start the outer core back into motion, and send our heroes on a journey to the centre of the earth. (One sequence involving a cluster of gigantic crystalline stalagmites recalls the 1959 adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel. Too bad this film is otherwise completely lacking in that film’s Méliès-esque imaginative charm.)
Of course, things get more complicated. It seems the core problem may have been caused because the arrogant scientist has tinkered with the forces of nature by building a seismic weapon called Project Destiny. Firing the weapon again could possibly reverse the damage, but it would kill the terranauts in the process. As the aboveground situation worsens, the U.S. government starts getting an itchy trigger finger, and it’s up to Rat to use his computer “kung fu” to stop them.
The Core is as dumb as dumb Hollywood flicks get (and contrary to what some critics have claimed, its dumbness is not redeemed by the kind of self-awareness that can make dumbness fun). It’s even dumber than the Jerry Bruckheimer schlockfests that have clearly inspired it. It’s the kind of film in which all the characters have nicknames like “Stick” or “Braz” (or the aforementioned “Rat”), and in which a character’s death means the survivors have to look all solemn for ten seconds before they resume going through the motions of their alleged adventure. No doubt as part of this film’s promotional propaganda, the media have recently dredged up various scientists who claim that the earth’s core might really stop rotating in the future. To me, the thought that Armageddon could inspire imitators is a hell of a lot scarier.
(1.5/4)