Simply A Masterpiece

Nice effects though.

Expected more

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The only way to save Earth from catastrophe is to drill down to the core and set it spinning again.Strangely enough, the worst part of this film is the part about them drilling into the core. Or, in other words, the entire second half. The practicality of it is so nonsensical that it makes "Armageddon" look plausible.However, the first half is quite good. Aaron Eckhart is wonderful and a convincing scientist. The discussions of theoretical matters is quite interesting. I did not realize, for example, that the core of the earth is as big as Mars! (Yes, it's true.) The problem only really starts when these theories get tested in a silly way.

This film is literally so bad it hurts. It is "The Room" made with a budget of $60mil and a cast of well-known actors. The level of pseudo- science spouted off is on a par with a 50s low-budget SF movie. The plot is so weak and so full of unbelievable twists and solutions that a 3-year-old would scratch his head. Just wow!

THE CORE is a '50s B-movie writ large. It may not be a brilliant film, but it successfully taps the 'anything goes' mentality of a schlocky black-and-white sci fi epic and updates the formula to modern times. In essence the movie itself is about a crew drilling down into the core of the earth; if you're looking for more depth (hah) than that, then look elsewhere. However, the decision was then made to add some familiar 'disaster' scenes to the mix, thus increasing the running time to over two hours in the process and making this movie way too long. With half an hour cut out, the tension and story would have been tighter and it wouldn't have that bloated Hollywood blockbuster feel to it.Of course, the 1959 epic JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH with James Mason is THE drilling-into-the-Earth movie and THE CORE doesn't come close. Ironically, the special effects are worse than in that film; despite replacing tacky dinosaurs with CGI effects of molten rock and running lava, all of the 'outside' scenes of the craft heading underground are poor-looking in the extreme. However, I did like the 'global disaster' set pieces which are thrown in to keep the film exciting. Highlights include: falling pigeons in Trafalgar Square; super-storms in Rome; people dropping down dead in a US city and my favourite moment, when a hole in the Earth's atmosphere sends down a heat ray that melts the Golden Gate bridge – a wonderful and surprisingly sadistic moment.Speaking of sadism, THE CORE sets about offing crew members with relish, imaginatively inventing the most horrific deaths in existence for these poor saps. One guy is slowly crushed to death; another is blown to pieces; a third literally melts in the lava and a fourth burns alive. It would be pretty disturbing, had the film more realism. I didn't mind the script, which has some authentic-sounding dialogue in places, and you can't fault a movie that name-checks one of my favourite magazines. There's also some good humour, like the 'yes, yes, and the core is made of cheese!' quip that Stanley Tucci's scientist character utters. There's not as much annoying flag-waving as in Armageddon, although the pay-off (using a bomb to save the world) is virtually the same.The casting ain't bad either. Aaron Eckhart (THE DARK NIGHT) excels as the rugged lead; Hilary Swank is the tough-cookie pilot forced to make some drastic decisions. I didn't care for Stanley Tucci's acting, but I did appreciate the presence of Tcheky Karyo (KISS OF THE DRAGON) in a good-guy role for once – in fact, he's my favourite character in the film.

After reading a few reviews saying "it's not that bad" and wanting to see a few "omg the earth will die please USA do something" movies... I dared to watch this one again. What a terrible idea. I now know why I could barely watch it until the end the first time. This movie is insulting your brain. It's an insult to science, an insult to pure logic at times. The acting is maybe the best thing here, I feel like they still try to do something (not all of them, not all the time), in spite of the awful story and script. Even the music is terrible. Oh yeah, some people will say (as they always do) "hey, it's a movie. What about star wars, they have droids, light sabers, spaceships, etc...". The difference is that star wars is not science fiction, star wars is a space opera. And they could be using technology that we just don't know or don't know yet. The "science" in "The core" is about things that we know. And almost everything is wrong or does not make sense at all. This movie is terrible, terrible to the core.