A Paramount release of a David Foster/Cooper Layne/Sean Bailey production. Produced by Foster, Layne, Bailey. Coproducer, David Householter. Directed by Jon Amiel. Screenplay, Cooper Layne, John Rogers.
Dr. Josh Keyes - Aaron Eckhart
Major Rebecca "Beck" Childs - Hilary Swank
Dr. Ed "Braz" Brazzelton - Delroy Lindo
Dr. Conrad Zimsky - Stanley Tucci
Rat - D.J. Qualls
General Purcell - Richard Jenkins
Dr. Serge Levesque - Tcheky Karyo
Commander Richard Iverson - Bruce Greenwood
Stickley - Alfre Woodard
In the saving-the-world-from-imminent-destruction genre, "The Core" takes its place as the anti-"Armageddon": The daring rescue team must travel into the earth instead of away from it, and, more notably, the picture projects a sardonically irreverent rather than pretentiously self-inflated view of its own importance. As disposable as the popcorn that will be widely consumed during its theatrical runs, this lavishly produced drama about a molten threat to global survival is nonetheless more palatable than most pictures of its ilk due to its keen awareness of its own preposterousness, a self-knowledge exuberantly expressed by a mostly live-wire cast. Its release postponed once already due to delays with the abundant special effects, Paramount pic is hitting the market at a difficult moment, when audiences may be too preoccupied with real-life imperilment to be much amused by make-believe cataclysms. B.O. will be hard-pressed to cover massive production and marketing costs.
Watching a disaster movie isn't what it used to be; it's too difficult to invent scenes of calamitous catastrophe that don't somehow produce the uneasy feeling that such things could actually happen. Early set-piece of a U.S. space shuttle going into fiery descent and then crash landing is an obvious example. But scenes of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Colosseum being obliterated, along with much of the beautiful cities that contain them, just don't provide the escape they once did. For the moment, anyway, this too-close-for-comfort factor presents new challenges to aspiring disaster pic makers.
Since the format demands the central group of professionals assigned to save the planet from extinction be whittled down to one or two members by story's end, key decision here was the adoption of a cheeky tone that stops short of becoming outright parody. First-time screenwriter Cooper Layne and co-scenarist John Rogers (a former stand-up comedian, "Cosby" writer-producer and "Rush Hour 2" cowriter) dispense with laborious exposition by making the leading characters so brainy they have no need for lengthy explanations. Such an approach proves refreshing, especially when delivered by such energized actors as Aaron Eckhart and Stanley Tucci, playing rival scientists of polar temperaments.
Eckhart's Dr. Josh Keyes, a dashingly disheveled geophysicist, is called in by the government to assess why 32 people with pacemakers in Boston dropped dead simultaneously. Then, in a startling homage to Hitchcock's "The Birds," thousands of pigeons in London's Trafalgar Square go berserk, crashing into pedestrians, cars and windows. After the space shuttle puts down unexpectedly in the concrete bed of the Los Angeles River (passing perilously low over a packed Dodger Stadium) and the aurora borealis becomes a fixture over Washington, D.C., Josh comes to the conclusion the end of the world is nigh.
Seems the earth's electromagnetic field is falling apart because the fast-spinning molten rock that surrounds the planet's core has stopped moving. At the outside, Josh informs U.S. military brass, the world has a year left, a view seconded by preening scientist Conrad Zimsky (Tucci), whose high regard for himself knows no bounds.
As in "Armageddon," the solution lies in nuking the phenomenon that threatens Earth, in this case to restimulate the globe's "engine," a task entrusted to Gallic atomic weapons wizard Serge Leveque (Tcheky Karyo) in what now plays as a nostalgic expression of Franco-American geopolitical collaboration. Conveniently enough, Conrad knows a renegade scientist, "Braz" Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo) who's been working on a mighty machine that can cut through the hardest of materials and also withstand temperatures of up to 9,000 degrees -- just the thing for burrowing to the Earth's core.
And who better to drive this craft than the pilots who gave the shuttle such a hair-raising ride, Commander Robert Iverson (Bruce Greenwood) and Major Rebecca "Beck" Childs (Hilary Swank). A final member of the team is eccentric computer hacker genius Rat (D.J. Qualls, of "Road Trip").
By genre standards, this set-up, which lasts 55 minutes, is adroitly and sometimes amusingly handled, as Josh dubs himself "Apocalypse Boy" and the film is able to make light of how the "terranauts" will put "the world's biggest weapons of mass destruction" to good use.
Ultimately, though, director Jon Amiel and the vast special effects crew are faced with the unavoidable dilemma of how to visualize inner space while a giant manned drill bores its way through a few thousand miles of rock and whatever else they decide is down there. In the name of realism, they can't go the way of Jules Verne and the makers of the 1959 screen version of his "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by creating a subterranean world of spectacular caverns and swirling oceans populated by monsters.
Instead, the craft descends some 29,000 feet to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean before reaching the earth's crust, then slices through all manner of gunk conveniently illuminated by the powerful laser that treats everything like butter, except for some giant quartz and diamond fields. Plausibility issues begin to fester as the drama takes an unavoidably serious turn; no matter how glib the screenwriters, it's hard to explain away a character's ability to leave the ship when it's been established the air pressure outside is 800,000 pounds per square inch.
Yet the characters do dwindle in number, usually going nobly and furthering the task at hand. But when it comes time for the arrogant Conrad to sacrifice himself, he throws a hilarious hissy fit that would do Sandra Bernhard proud; Tucci makes the egomaniac's outburst more scorching than any lava eruption the film has to offer -- and his character's insistence upon smoking, even in the bowels of the earth, as if he were in some World War II movie, adds to the impudent fun.
Still, the speed bumps thrown in the way of the mission's successful completion feel increasingly manufactured and, as in "Journey to the Center of the Earth," little time is wasted getting the survivors back to the surface. Coda has a nicely subversive quality that would have paid off better had the script more clearly laid out what the official cover story was for what ailed the planet.
As usual with this sort of fare, each character has one defining trait. Aside from Josh's breezy brilliance and Conrad's imperiousness, there's Beck's unswerving self-confidence, Commander Iverson's time-refined sagacity, Braz's wounded pride, Serge's blustery humanism and Rat's newly channeled mischievousness. Resourceful thesps do everything they can within the proscribed limitations.
Lensed principally in British Columbia but with location and second unit work done in Utah, L.A., San Francisco, D.C., London, Rome, Paris and Montreal, pic has a full-bodied feel given extra texture by John Lindley's lustrous cinematography. Score by Christopher Young is far more supple and less bombastic than those normally plastered over films like this. Except for two or three shots that scream CGI, effects are generally very good, with special kudos to the Rising Sun Pictures shop for the shuttle crash sequence and to 3D Site for the ultra-credible London bird rampage.
Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen), John Lindley; editor, Terry Rawlings; music, Christopher Young; production designer, Philip Harrison; supervising art director, Andrew Neskoromny; art director, Sandra Tanaka; set decorator, Lin MacDonald; costume designer, Dan Lester; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS), Darren Brisker; supervising sound editors, John Leveque, Anthony R. Milch; re-recording mixers, Chris Jenkins, Frank A. Montano; visual effects supervisor, Gregory L. McMurry; special effects supervisor, Garry Elmendorf; stunt coordinator, Scott Ateah; assistant director, Jim Brebner; second unit director/camera, Chris Woods; casting, Deborah Aquila, Tricia Wood. Reviewed at the Chinese 6, L.A., March 13, 2003. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 136 min.
Contact Todd McCarthy at
tmccarthy@reedbusiness.com