With “The Core,” Hollywood’s biggest would-be-spectacle-turned-farce since “Armageddon,” director Jon Amiel (“Entrapment”) raises the suspicion that he may be the bastard child of Joel Schumacher and Jerry Bruckheimer because he has carried on the mistakes both of these men have repeatedly made throughout their careers — most notably, the assumption that the average American has the I.Q. of a 12-year-old and that people will trample each other to see CGI-laden trash.
Sadly, it appears Hollywood has not yet figured out that its long-held vision of audiences being wooed by catchy phrases and flashing lights is wrong. One can actually picture a crew of “yes men” nibbling on their pens and nodding knowingly, surrounding the brilliant executive who came up with the catchy tagline for this film, “The Only Way Out Is In.” Only in Hollywood could such a ground-breaking idea find such high-level acceptance.
The film begins in a college lecture hall, with Professor Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart, “Nurse Betty”) teaching students about the basics of sound waves. Yet in explaining this simple phenomenon, he uses enough confusing jargon to make Stephen Hawking’s head spin. Keyes then proceeds to stumble across the end of the world after a series of events (like all pacemaker recipients dropping dead) that seem out of the ordinary, to say the least.
Enter Rebecca Childs (Hilary Swank, “Boys Don’t Cry”), a young, promising Air Force pilot who is worried her job might be on the line after landing a space shuttle in downtown Los Angeles. Obviously, she’s wrong and is hailed as a hero by her superiors. Swank’s performance can only be described as sputtering, her emotions muddled and her reactions terribly passive, despite her role as a fearless female overcoming the odds.
Next, we meet the crazy, eccentric scientist in the desert who seems to have come up with a heat-resistant element, a super-powered drilling laser and plans for a large ship that would utilize both of these discoveries, all at the same time. It’s a damn good thing too, considering all of these things are required to go to the center of the earth.
To add insult to injury, DJ Qualls (“Road Trip”) shows up as a wisecracking cyber-genius. Qualls adds absolutely nothing to the film (except being the only friend of the core crew in a room full of “evil” Pentagon officials).
After some cheap CGI destruction sequences and an endless barrage of scenes showing the ship zipping through healthy helpings of liquid hot magma, the crew puts together a last-ditch attempt to save the world after its first plan goes awry.
From there follow moments of painfully obvious foreshadowing and irony. There is no moral or underlying message to this movie, other than the revelation that the center of the earth is really hot and dangerous.
Amiel takes this project seriously, and the film repeatedly overreaches in futile attempts at grasping his vision. He seems to let his genes bleed through, with Schumacher-ish plot twists (notorious for their underdevelopment) and childish, Bruckheimer-esque effects.
There isn’t even any hope of sleeping through “The Core” with all its hull breaches and nuclear blasts, which is agonizing since the film almost tops two hours. Moreover, it is a bit disappointing when Rome suffers a hard hit of static electricity storms that literally rip the city to pieces. This will probably leave the viewer asking, “Why not Paris?”
Grade: D
