The Core Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)March 27th, 2003
Core, The
Matinee Price
Summer is here! The Core opened! Nice, escapist fun for me! Big action packed popcorn movies and - what? Smartypant darlings Stanley Tucci, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, and Delroy Lindo are in it? But I thought that - huh? The military is depicted as short sighted and since they might accidentally destroy the world they decide scientists are the answer? Smart scientists? Believabley smart ones? Wait, I'm confused.
And thank goodness! I will grant you that I don't know diddly about geoastrophysics and I don't know if the key inciting incident (clue: it has something to do with the Earth's core) is possible/likely/whatever. Specifically: I don't care, and neither should you. The Matrix is (hopefully) impossible and that didn't keep it from being a smart, cool ride of a movie. Ditto for Jurassic Park. This ain't Armageddon. The point is that the movie grants the conceit that such a thing is possible, and thankfully goes balls out all the way with it.
First, what would the effects of such an event be? Without spoiling some of my favorite scenes, suffice it to say that the resulting problem would make for some very cool scenes. For all I know, that would really happen if such a problem came up. It seems like they did their homework on the basics, so maybe it could. Next: how to explain it to militiary and Fed heads (and the audience) in a comprehensible manner? Also done well, though it is the weakest point. Gotta spell it out for the lowest common denominator. Then we have an obligatory pre-disaster disaster, which will probably have realists pounding their heads, but it was truly very cool on screen. And that is why we see action movies after all, isn't it?
Now the good part. We get to know, understand, and care about the characters, who have decent dialogue. Not great, but serviceable and not insulting. Eckhart has extra funny throwaway lines, no doubt improvised by him. As we get to know them, they exhibit 2, even 3 dimensional behavior. There are nowhere near as many 11th hour anythings as we have been trained to expect. No Pearl Harbor smarm, no deus ex anything that wasn't previously accounted for. And - best of all - the movie totally glamorizes smart people. Not Beautiful Rain Mind Man savants or Mozarty prodigies, but real nose to the grindstone types with degrees and decorations and everything (and they are often undervalued as well. They have something to show for their lives devoted to wisdom and knowledge, and they are our only hope. Huzzah! That (and the groovy near-opening long shot) was the best part of all. I really had a good time and I hope you give it a shot. I'll see it again.
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These reviews (c) 2003 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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