The Core (2003)

Director: Jon Amiel                                        Writer: Cooper Layne & John Rogers
Film Score: Christopher Young                        Cinematography: John Lindley
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Bruce Greenwood and Stanley Tucci

I expected not to like The Core. It’s one of those star-studded disaster movies that usually winds up being a disaster itself. First of all, the premise is crazy. The core of planet Earth has been slowing down for reasons that cannot be explained . . . apparently. This is destroying all of the electromagnetic energy on the surface and the only way to restore the balance and keep the rotation going is to drill to the core of the Earth and set off a nuclear bomb. You can almost buy that, but the science-fiction inner-space ship that is designed to go through rock like it was butter is absolutely comical. With Hilary Swank manning the cockpit to save the planet from destruction one would think it would be difficult not to laugh. And yet . . . somehow . . . despite all the improbability . . . it works.

The opening of the film includes a scene like something out of Hitchcock’s The Birds, but the birds aren’t attacking humans, they’re dying. The change in the electromagnetic field is causing them to fly into buildings, windows, and buses, all with disastrous results. Add to that the near crash-landing of a space shuttle due to the faulty information from the altered electromagnetic field, and it’s clear there is a problem. Aaron Eckhart is the scientist who discovers the anomaly. Stanley Tucci is the snooty scientist who predicted the doomsday scenario. Delroy Lindo is the scientist who actually invented the technology to fly through rocks including the heat resistant metal Unobtanium that James Cameron stole for Avatar, Turkish actor Tchéky Karyo is the weapons expert, and Hilary Swank and Bruce Greenwood are the erstwhile shuttle pilots who are now driving to the center of the Earth. The government immediately begins a Manhattan-like project to build the ship, then sends the terranauts into the ground.

There are lots of good supporting stars as well, Alfre Woodard is the commander of mission control, and Richard Jenkins is the army Chief of Staff. As with all good disaster films, there is a tremendous rate of attrition for the stars. The further they go beneath the surface of the Earth, the more of them start dying. There are also plenty of opportunities for sacrifice for the greater good. It’s textbook all the way. Moments of panic and indecision are interspersed with moments of crisis and resolution. It has the requisite tension, the requisite suspense, and the requisite humor. And, of course, since I’m writing this ten years later, obviously the world was saved. Unfortunately Rome and San Francisco take a real beating, but the rest of the planet survives.

In The B List essay by Charles Taylor he makes some astute observations about the film. The first is that it is a return to what made these kinds of movies popular in the first place: an intimate relationship to the characters and a kind of claustrophobic tension that goes along with it. He also points out the relative lack of CGI in terms of moving the plot forward. The majority of the film takes place on the ship, in the cockpit and the other sections, and therefor the drama focuses on the characters and their problem solving. Also, the characters are actually pretty good. The only misstep in his analysis is when he undercuts his opinion by touting the merits of the 1976 remake of King Kong, which was a joke. Otherwise he makes a pretty good case for the merits of the film. Unlike most modern disasters of films, The Core is a disaster film that worth checking out.