THE CORE (2003) ** Well, they get some, some points for originality in the theme of a plot. The earth's core has stopped rotating. I wouldn't read any particular social or political statement into the rest of it, they're not trying to say anything important they're just setting down something relatively reasonable to explain an absurdly bizarre situation. Nothing wrong with that. Fact is there's not anything particularly wrong with any of it, which is not the film's strength. Special effects are necessarily relied on to much, and while they're neither great nor credible, they are kind of cool. The actors all catch something about their character and never lapse hopelessly beyond, the latter of which would have been refreshing, like a pail of water on your head I guess. This is more a saver than a spoiler: they understand that they're on the border of wasting your time anyway, so the threatened romance between Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank never gets going. Whew!, now you can worry about relatively minor threats like the end of the world. Delroy Lindo is the only one who suggests that he might be comfortable in an even artsier treatment of the subject, and DJ Qualls the one who might have shone if it had been done the way it probably should have. It's all passable enough, unless you have a total aversion to this kind of movie, in which case you'll not find the cure here.
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