Review of THE CORE

THE CORE

A man prepares to enter a business meeting where he anticipates making a million dollars. Unfortunately, he drops dead. Dozens  more people in that city die at the same time, in the same mysterious and sudden manner. The victims had one factor in common: they all had cardiac pacemakers.

Then pigeons in London's Trafalgar square go nuts, crashing into windows and people, causing damage and injury, not to mention killing themselves.  And a space shuttle falls out of orbit and would have crashed if not for the brave actions of Major REBECCA CHILDS (who is then reprimanded by her superior officer). What's going on?

JOSH KEYES (played by Aaron Eckhart) realizes that severe perturbations in the Earth's magnetic field must have disrupted both the pacemakers, the birds' navigational sense, and the shuttle.  And the magnetic fields are screwy because THE EARTH'S MOLTEN CORE HAS STOPPED ROTATING.  Gasp. And WE'LL ALL DIE in a few months if it isn't fixed.

The only solution is to burrow through the Earth down to the core, explode some strategically placed hydrogen bombs in a precise sequence, and restart the core's rotation. Fortunately, shunned scientist ED (BRAZ) BRAZZELTON has spent his academic exile building an ultrasonic drill which can indeed take a vehicle to the core, and, by gosh, he even has the vehicle. Keyes assembles a team, including Braz, Rebecca, CONRAD ZIMSKY, an obnoxious but world famous physicist, and two others to save the world.

It's a difficult trip. They start out in the ocean, but almost can't find the spot where they're supposed to penetrate the Earth's crust. Then, while in the mantle, the encounter masses of compressed carbon--diamonds actually--the drill can't penetrate.  Then they realize they're going too fast, which screws up the precise timing they need to detonate the bombs. And so forth and so on, one crisis after another.

Will they save the world?  Will any of them make it back to the surface alive (minor spoiler--some won't)? Will Josh and Becky ever consummate their obviously growing passion?

Do I care? The characters were introduced in a rather superficial way. They are distinguishable, but one doesn't get to know them well enough to care who lives or dies or falls in love.

The movie has a lot of implausible bullshit.  Plausible bullshit is a stable of science fiction, but come on. These writers weren't even trying.

As a cinematic effort, this movie is a POS (piece of shit.)  But as a workout movie, it's effective. There is so much excitement and passion, it hooked me in spite of myself.  It deserves ++++ - it will get your pulse up to a run.