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The Core (2003)

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57 out of 66 people found the following comment useful :-
Abandon all brains ye who enter here, 26 December 2003
Author: steve-thomp from Victoria, Australia

The Core is one of those movies you can hate intensely yet can feel a strange affinity for. It resembles the kind of nonsensical science-fiction made in the 1950s when audiences had no knowledge whatsoever about science: a dodgy set-up, a ludicruous solution, and an eager band of gradually expendable characters to join you on this world-saving adventure. Like its predecessor Armageddon it gives you a totally unbelievable scenario, but pleasingly does not fill the ship with a grab-bag of misfits and personality disorders to provide humour. And off they go deep into the Earth's crust, armed with a mid-range special effects budget and a mid-range script. Like HG Wells or Lovecraft you can either reject it out of hand, or bite your tongue and enjoy the ride. I chose the latter, and while I shook my head continuously, it wasn't the worst thing I've seen.

Like many sci-fi films these days, the set-up seemed better than the conclusion: dozens of people sporting pacemakers drop dead after a magnetic shockwave hits a city, pigeons go berserk in Trafalgar Square, the Space Shuttle veers off-course and lands in an LA culvert. The movie's head boffin is comandeered from his dull lecturing job to explain the world's problems with the help of a peach, some air-freshener and a cigarette lighter (perhaps the most pathetic scientific demo in the history of cinema). You see, the Earth's core has stopped spinning, our electro-magnetic field is dying, and we're all about to be toasted by the solar winds. How do we get it fixed? Drill 2000 miles into the core and detonate some nukes? No problem!

I'll ignore the many scientific, physical and continuity errors that popped up during the movie as they have been amply described here already - more or better advice could've been taken to prevent these needless flaws is all I can say. Then again, good old B-movie schlock like "Fantastic Voyage" and "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" also had its share of shortcomings, and this is in the same vein - I just hope nobody thinks they are learning geophysics from this film. Watch it with eyes wide open and brain shut, and you'll be fine.

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47 out of 63 people found the following comment useful :-
Core has chewy center, cheesy surface, 23 September 2003

Author: Dan Franzen (dfranzen70) from United States

Hollywood's gone to the outer reaches of our galaxy (not to mention others), it's plumbed the depths of the ocean, mapped dank swamps and arid deserts, but one place it hasn't gone to with any sort of regularity is the inner core itself.

The Core is certainly one of those movies for which one must suspend disbelief. It's a science-fiction movie that emphasizes fiction over all; that is, the physics of the film don't hold up to snuff. If you're an engineer or physicist, you should be smart enough not to watch it - you'll just spend most of your time second-guessing the inane psuedoscience.

It seems the inner core of the Earth has stopped spinning, for some reason, and this has caused the electromagnetic field that surrounds and protects the planet to begin to decompose. This is evidenced by, among other things, pigeons in Tralfagar Square in London suddenly veering at plate-glass windows and sundry people who wish they were extras in a less-violent movie, like Daddy Daycare or maybe Finding Nemo. At any rate, the world's leading scientists, commissioned by the military (it wouldn't be a Save the Planet from Imminent Destruction without our pals in the movie military), figure out that the core's stopped rotating, and that Something Must Be Done to get it going again.

Ah, but what? We've only drilled down about 8 miles, and according to my calculations the distance from the surface to the core is .... a bit further. We must drill down, sayeth the sage scientists, and lo and behold, through the magic of movies, there's this guy in the desert who's been working on a laser rocket thingy that'll help them blast all the way down. This handy little thing is just the cure, so a crew is hastily assembled: Commander Iverson (Bruce Greenwood), Major Beck Childs (Hilary Swank), Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart), Dr. Serge Leveque (Tcheky Karyo), Dr. Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci), and Dr. Ed Brazzelton.

Like such doomsday movies as Armageddon, what The Core has going for it are likeable characters and a lot of nifty FX. It also has the unknown working for it; we don't know what lies beneath the thin crust of the Earth, because we haven't drilled beyond it. That allows filmmakers a lot of free reign to depict whatever the heck they want in terms of What's Down There.

What The Core has going against it, however, is a predictable plot and some howlingly awful dialog. Now, it's not giving anything away to mention that at least one person doesn't make it back from this mission. It's also not giving anything away to note that there's at least one knockdown, drag-out hissy fit of a scene in which Keyes admonishes Childs for something she didn't do. It's hysterical to watch, although I suspect the emotion the director was attempting to convey was more like empathy, not euphoria. Or ennui, which is unfortunately how some of the movie felt.

The Core is cheesy. No, not the actual inner core - although, come to think of it, maybe it is, since we don't know for sure what it's made of. And wouldn't that be fitting? A cheesy core for a cheesy film made by cheesy people in a cheesy society? Who's up for some Muenster?

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48 out of 65 people found the following comment useful :-
A middling, mildy entertaining diversion., 18 April 2003
Author: Li-1

** out of ****

The Core is the "low-budget" answer to Armageddon, meaning it was made on less than half the cost but desires to be its equal in delivering thrills and big buckets of popcorn fun. Now, whether or not you liked Armageddon is a good determinant of whether or not you should even bother watching The Core in the first place. I myself haven't seen that Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer production in a while, and memory serves that it was an unbelievably preposterous, but enjoyable thrill ride that had a great sense of humor. How does The Core compare?

Well, if I hadn't seen Armageddon, I might have liked this film more, which is not to say that it's a weaker movie, just that the disaster formula plays out in much the same way so there's a sense of deja vu hanging over the proceedings. There are a lot of people out there who hated Armageddon, perhaps for its absurd science or for its quick-cut action sequences, so for those who didn't like the latter, The Core would be more up their alley, though the science here is even sillier.

The premise is the anti-Deep Impact/Armageddon. A group of expert individuals have to go to the center of the Earth to jumpstart the core, which has stopped spinning for some unknown reason. Heading this mission is professor Josh Keys (Aaron Eckhart), who's leading a six-man team, with a woman playing a key role, of course, as the pilot, played by Hilary Swank. Recognizable faces Delroy Lindo, Tcheky Karyo, Stanely Tucci, and Bruce Greenwood round out the rest of this very expendable team.

Already, we realize the plot is fundamentally impossible. The only people who wouldn't recognize this are those still in grade school, so they'll probably get a kick out of the movie while thinking they're getting some kind of education out of this because of all the scientific mumbo-jumbo and technobabble. More discriminatory viewers will scoff at all the sudden new inventions that aid our intrepid group of heroes, particularly the hull Delroy Lindo devises that's actually strengthened by heat. For me, scientific flaws are acceptable so long as it's not so blatantly obvious, but this movie's stretching my suspension of disbelief.

But those who don't care for any scientific inaccuracies will wonder, is the action any good? The answer's a mixed bag. Almost all the action is entirely CGI-related, so the question of whether or not you find it exciting to see an "earthcraft" (named Virgil) get banged around quite a few times is crucial to your enjoyment. The action aboveground is all given away in the trailers, and none of it's particularly exciting, thanks to the weak special effects. The space shuttle crash, the destruction of the Roman Colosseum and the Golden Gate bridge are not examples of CGI-work at its best, to put it kindly. A 60 million dollar budget isn't quite enough to pull a movie of this sort off, and it sometimes shows.

Surprisingly enough, the scenes set below ground do somewhat make up for the slack. A crisis is introduced every five to ten minutes to keep the characters working, so what we get is a briskly paced and often enjoyable second half. The effects work is still spotty, but I found the characters relatively engaging, the situations fairly compelling, and the Mcgyverish-solutions amusing. Still marring this outing on a consistent basis, however, are the film's predictability, the occasionally really bad dialogue, the lack of solid intentional humor, and the stilted finale. The Core is not an unenjoyable timewaster, but it's not exactly a great night at the movies, either.

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88 out of 145 people found the following comment useful :-
Better than its reputation, 25 January 2005

Author: Marshtacular from London, England

The Core is a solid action-adventure/disaster flick with a novel idea and a great cast. True, it is very silly, and some of the effects don't quite come off, but that's true of most films in its genre. I've watched it on DVD a couple of times now, always late at night, always steeped in alcohol, and I have to say it passes a couple of very easy hours. The opening scene in Trafalgar Square with the crazy pigeons is better than anything in The Day After Tomorrow. And who can resist the beautiful, talented, Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank? So please give The Core a break. Stop taking it so seriously. Down a six pack and accept The Core into your lives.

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27 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
Logic takes a beating, 28 April 2006

Author: davidmay from Australia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This expose is for people who have seen the movie and can't quite put their finger on why they have come away feeling so dirty. Well people, following are a few reasons why The Core poops all over science along with having the worst plot, characters and premise of all time.

Firstly, that little speech the physicist gave to the class about sound traveling through rocks? He says something about the wavelength increasing (ding right), and then says the frequency will decrease (bzzz wrong). Frequency stays the same regardless of the medium it is traveling through. It is the wavelength that will in fact decrease.

Secondly, what's with the explanation of how the Earth is going to end? Burning a peach with a deodorant can? Come on, I know military people are considered no-brainers, but he was demonstrating this to the people that lead a high tech organization. This patronises any military personnel, as well as the audience.

Thirdly, The premise of the film is based around the effects that occur because the core of the Earth stops rotating. Let me just first note that there are geological records to say that the magnetic field has changed direction many times in the past, with evidence to support that each time it has been reduced close to 0. To the best of my knowledge, and that of every history book out there, this happens without any of us combusting like the peach.

Fourthly, the scene with the golden gate bridge heating up because of a hole in the magnetic field? I think someone got magnetic field and ozone layer mixed up. The idea of punching a hole in a field is absurd. The field may be weakened, but the atmosphere would still protect our little bridges from cosmic radiation.

Fifthly, there is a force field (magnetic) around the Earth, not much of one, but there is one, not an "electromagnetic energy field". An energy field would do sweet f*ck all to deflect radiation. The same radiation that is supposed to wipe out humans like the peach...

Sixthly, 5 200-megaton nukes? Come on, those would weigh about 250 tons together. Let's try transport that on the dildo shaped 'virgil'. And the computer simulations of how they would be set off? All in 1 spot? That wouldn't create the required rotational force, since there would be no rotational force due to symmetry. He finally gets it right in the end to place them apart from each other. How they initially overlooked this one, I have no idea.

Seventhly, the material used to withstand all the pressure and temperature on 'virgil' was called 'unobtainium'. nuff said.

Eighthly, assuming we just spent the entirety of the world's budget on developing paradoxically copious amounts of unobtanium, it would take another 10 budgets over to have the resources to "control" the internet.

Ninthly, when 'virgil' was tunneling downwards, why could the people walk around inside as if it was horizontal? They mentioned the rotating bridge, but didn't mention anything about rotating hallways, or the rip in the space-time continuum needed to walk straight between the bridge and the subsequent hallways. The compartments would need to rotate individually, which would put them out of alignment with each of the other compartments. Logically, they would be aligned parallel for everyone to be walking horizontal, and not fall to the front of the ship, as the front is pointing towards the centre of the Earth. If only they could pretend virgil was round, and the entire inside could rotate as one. A pity every shot shows a long cylindrical ship incapable of this.

Tenthly, the giant geode that they crash into? All that pressure, all that temperature? But if that wasn't enough, they get out, and walk around. I know those space suits they had on looked cool, but they couldn't withstand the ~1000 degrees of temperature, and a few thousand kPa of pressure that is needed to keep the geode from collapsing under the weight of the world.

Eleventhly, when the ship springs a leak? It would have been like a nuke going off in the ship, but instead, it took a few minutes for the compartment to crush.

Twelfthly, the unlucky guy that has to walk through 9000 degrees temperature in a suit only designed to withstand 5000 degrees. He makes it to the duct and switches the lever? 9000 degrees is about 2-3 times the temperature of a nuclear bomb going off. I think the walls and floor of the corridor would have been glowing white with heat. Our man would have been vaporised, but lucky for him, only his converse pumps melted to get to the lever.

Thirteenthly, the guy that pulls out the plutonium rods undergoing fission? He didn't even have a helmet on. $10 says his kids will have 5 noses, 3 mouths, and a foot coming out of their heads. I guess it's a good thing though that the DNA of such a twit is wiped from our society in these industrial accidents.

Fourteenthly, when the power cut out from the lack of reactor rods, they hook up the power cables to the inner hull. Where do they put the ground? There needs to be a potential drop for power to be gained, and if there was a ground, then anyone that touched the hull would have been electrocuted.

Fifteenthly, the arming code for the nukes was the first four prime numbers... 1 2 3 5... Pretty sure 1 is not a prime number.

Well, thats about all, and thats not even going into the fact about how the core could stop spinning in the first place. Thanks for your time.

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24 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
Worth a Dollar if You Have Two Hours to Kill, 15 January 2005

Author: Quicksand from Dallas, TX

How can you tell when a director is bad? I mean, assuming the director is given $50 million or so, competent actors, and a halfway-decent script, what would the film look like if he/she REALLY didn't know what he/she was doing? I think that film would look a lot like "The Core."

From the preview stage, this movie was on my "might see it but not pay for it" list, so I just now caught it on cable. Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart will definitely have Oscars someday, and most of the other actors who make it on the ship are of similar caliber. The comic relief generally works ("I'm going to need Xena tapes and lots of Hot Pockets"), and the plot is no more ridiculous than, say, "The Day After Tomorrow" (though it is slightly LESS ridiculous-- at least this movie attempts to offer a cause for the problem, however unlikely).

I remember watching "Entrapment," another John Amiel film, and thinking it was, in a word, awful. The editing was off, the plot lumbered ahead only through the will of Sean Connery's accent and Catherine Zeta-Jones spandex-clad anatomy. Watching "The Core," Amiel has decided his mistake was pacing, and turns up the volume to eleven and full speed ahead, hoping the charisma of his actors covers his butt. In the second half of the film, this works fine. In the first half, it just shows his limitations as a director... poor special effects during the space shuttle landing that could easily have been fixed with model work or different camera angles; birds going crazy and smacking into buildings look exactly like someone tossed a dummy against a building, then the editor cut it as close as possible. Truly, this is a man at the helm who doesn't know what a good film is supposed to look like. I wonder what an Ed Wood movie would have looked like, if someone had given THAT guy $50 million?

Characters die with clockwork predictability, and my only problem with the resolution was the actors were TOO good. They play geniuses, the absolute best in their fields, so when the movie ends I wanted to spend more time with them, see what incredible problems, discoveries, adventures they had next. The movie itself is barely a D+, thanks to the actors, occasionally adequate special effects (which we will call simply "effects"), and a really great score to hold it all together. I'd buy the score (not the pop songs over the credits) before I'd watch the movie again, but it's a thumbs up effort for everyone who isn't Amiel. Worth a dollar if you have two hours to kill.

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25 out of 37 people found the following comment useful :-
Better than often given credit for, 16 August 2006

Author: Clay Thompson (clay_thompson@hotmail.com) from Portland, OR

I am watching "The Core" after having read several other comments about the movie. The sentiments expressed go from being "Fine Movie" to "Worst Movie ever," the last obviously coming from someone who rated "Starship Troopers" as the "greatest Sci Fi movie ever made." There are parts of this movie that are actually very good. The first thing to give credit for was the cast that they had. It is a very good cast. Let me repeat, a very good cast. Alfrie Woodard has never given a bad performance, and although her role was relatively small, she brought moral gravity to the role that the movie needed. Delroy Lindo showed a range that I have never seen him do. Obviously better recognized as a man in control, he was nigh on perfect as the forgotten but brilliant scientist who still stings over Stanley Tucci's Conrad Zimsky having stole his discoveries from a generation earlier. Tucci, a fine actor, did take it over the top a bit too much. DJ Qualls gives an underrated performance. He is 6'2" but makes us believe he is a 5'7" geek. He gave a touching performance as he tried to slow down the big bad that caused the problem in the first place. Aaron Eckhart, normally a baddie, did a believable performance, with Hillary Swank, a two time Oscar winner bringing her easily recognized skills to the screen.

I originally wanted to blame Director Jon Amiel for the faults of the movie, but when I went back and considered individual roles and scenes, I realized that he did the job he was paid to do. The visual effects were more than adequate, constrained by the need, not for realism, but by the need to show things that would further the story.

So where did it go wrong? First, the problem, I believe, was with the writing. The script was very uneven. Part of it came from what appears to be last minute changes in the story line. Early trailers suggest a very different story -- and rumors from Hollywood at the time indicated this was true.

Too much of the story telling was quick and dirty, trying to just get it done. Had they not been locked in to a predetermined release date, they could have gotten the script right. Second, it seems there was a problem with editing. There were times when the film just went clunk. Was it poor editing in and of itself? Or was it editing that had to serve the problems with the script. Far from a perfect movie, but one with some very good elements. Give credit where credit is due.

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50 out of 87 people found the following comment useful :-
This film is made of pure unobtainium, 6 January 2005

Author: mfisher452 from Oklahoma

I don't know much about geology, but what little I do know suggests that the nature of the Earth's core is such as to be impervious to any merely human intervention, and that traveling to it is something human beings probably never will be able to do. Hence, any SF flick about humans doing one to rectify the other is likely to be as fanciful as The Wizard of Oz, so a big "caveat emptor" is attached to this movie. I figured that anyone audacious enough to cook up an eco-fable like this would have checked his science so as to make the movie more believable, but apparently I was wrong according to the legion of IMDb reviewers who have savaged this film.

This film reminded me a bit of the 1966 film "Fantastic Voyage," in which a group of scientists and their craft are shrunk to the size of a microbe and injected into the body of a scientist (or was it a diplomat?) who has been wounded in an assassination attempt, in a race against time to save his life. "The Core" resembles "Fantastic Voyage" in several ways: First, the technological premise that makes possible travel to this inaccessible realm is so far-fetched as to be more magical than scientific. Second, in all but a few places, the inside of the body is naturally quite dark, and so, one would think, is the interior of the Earth; but in both movies, these unseen realms are aglow with light. Third, the sex ratio is similar: Four men, one woman, who of course is played by Raquel Welch. Fourth, none of the characters rises much above stereotype, since the story is driven by situation, not characters. Fifth, come to think of it, Hilary Swank, while not as voluptuous as the young Raquel Welch (who could be?), does slightly resemble her. Sixth, the events of the film are kept secret from the public, and Edmund O'Brien's General Carter is very similar to General Purcell, who is played by that excellent and serviceable character actor Richard Jenkins. (Unfortunately, every time I saw Jenkins, I was distracted by memories of his hilarious performance as Walter Wingfield in "Say It Isn't So.") I will say one thing in this film's defense: As absurd as it may be, and as uninspired in terms of plot, characterization, visual effects and believability, it did keep me watching to find out what would happen next all the way to the end.

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18 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Undelete, 15 November 2006
Author: Rick Blaine from London

Jon Amiel is a well known and respected director known for his work with actors, so it may come as a bit of a surprise that he wanted to tackle a project like this. And he does say in the 'featurettes' that he wanted this to be a character driven narrative. And if you check the deleted scenes you'll see there was in fact enough material to make it so.

But something happened in the cutting room. The scenes that added depth to the characters were cut, leaving only the vestiges of a run of the mill catastrophe science fiction movie.

And it's wonderful the special effects people are proud of the work they've done but as viewers we're not interested so much in that as we want to have something pleasurable to watch.

And that's where this turkey fails.

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17 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Surgeons General Warning: May Lower IQ., 16 June 2005

Author: The Big H from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

1 out of 10, only because there are no negative numbers on the scale. I'm going to split the bashing of this film into 2 categories: Science, and The Rest

Science: Ill only cover a few things here, I bet someone could list 100 things wrong, but lets hit some random ones (limit to 7) 1: the ship has 6 compartments, 1 is crushed, 5 are used for nukes, and 1 is used to return home... therefore 6 = 7. Try and solve that, apologists.

2: If that "geode" were to have survived, its pressure inside would have to = that outside, in short, they would be all crushed like bugs stepping outside.

3: A pigeon cannot break plate glass, even if it tried.

4: Any hacker who could do half of what are hacker can would have either been locked up, or would be in control of the whole bloody world.

5: Gravity does not act perpendicular, it works VERY vertically, and it would keep anything IN the core from coming out, especially anything propelled by a minuscule nuke's shock wave

6: It does not matter if you start in the marinara trench or the top of everest, the difference is irrelevant compared to the radius of the Earth.

7: Throwing reactor grade plutonium next to a weapon is NOT going to make it more powerful (otherwise, they would be doing it already!)

If you want more on the 'science' read the other reviews, and the Intuitors insultingly bad movie physics page (google it)

Now, for the rest, which is to prove that this movie is bad even IF you have the IQ of a walnut and don't "care" about science.

1: Bad, BAD acting, not one character is believable, they evoke no sympathy, their backgrounds are so stereotypical, and their dialog is purely contrived and occasionally "slap your face I cant believe he said THAT" bad, full of clichés.

2: Speaking of stereotypes, every character is completely "by the books" predictable, the 'smartest' ones seem to die, except the hacker who is the worst character of them all, annoying, contrived, insulting, I truly had hoped he would have died.

3: Lets talk entertainment, not for one moment was I caught up in this movie, I did not have one shred of emotion, this movie has no substance, no deep moments, and the 'climax' and ending are just plain stupid. If you want an ending thats equally as stupid, watch Star Trek Voyagers: Threshold.

4: The plot is a dime a dozen, people off to save us from our mistakes and sins of some kind or another. Don't believe me, count how many movies you've seen where nukes save the day?

I could go on, but thinking about this movie is infuriating and probably damaging my braincells.

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