For those of you waiting for an exceptional sci-fi movie… keep waiting. This certainly isn’t it. This movie dishes up an unbelievable and very badly-paced storyline, with terribly-cheesy “we have to save the world” performances. In its attempt to try and set itself apart in the genre, the storyline has been pushed a bit too far off the surface of reality. Frankly, I found it almost comical.
The story begins with bizarre occurrences across the globe, from people with pacemakers dropping dead to colourful static fields appearing across the skies. A geophysicist named Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart), determines the cause of these strange disturbances: the Earth’s inner core has suddenly stopped rotating, which has caused the destruction of the electromagnetic field protecting the planet. If the core does not rotate and the electromagnetic field is not reconstructed, life on Earth will be destroyed forever.
In a desperate attempt to save the planet, the US government hires Josh Keyes, with geophysicist Dr. Zimsky (Stanley Tucci), weapons expert Dr. Levesque (Tchéky Karyo), astronauts Major Childs (Hillary Swank) and Commander Iverson (Bruce Greenwood), and Dr. Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo), who build a ship capable of drilling through the earth’s crust. The team’s objective is to travel to the earth’s core and detonate a nuclear device, in an attempt to get the core to rotate again.
Although the movie does have some very visually-appealing special effects, it lacks the overall excitement this type of movie is supposed to generate. The story is too far-fetched even for the wildest imagination, and the movie almost seems cobbled together in places from bits and pieces put together only because they seem to fit. Hillary Swank expresses as much pain and emotion as a puppet, and I was quite disappointed with her performance. The only actor I found noteworthy was Stanley Tucci, who portrays his role as the self-absorbed scientist very effectively. Not really worth watching at all!
This article was first published on 28 May 2003.