THE HUNGER GAMES: You Call That a Kiss?

The Hunger Games (2012) – Directed by Gary Ross – Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Wes Bentley, Toby Jones, Alexander Ludwig, Willow Shields, Amandla Stenberg, and Paula Malcomson.

THE HUNGER GAMES is an extraordinary film, thanks primarily to Gary Ross’ superb direction and Jennifer Lawrence’s totally engrossing performance as Katniss Everdeen. Gorgeously shot, expertly paced, with a script that hits all the right notes, HUNGER GAMES never forgets that at its center sits the horrible truth of children killing children for the entertainment of the elite.

And, by extension, us.

Let me state a few things plainly right off the top. If you hate this movie because Jennifer Lawrence is too “fat” to play Katniss, f*ck off. If you hate this movie because you didn’t realize Rue was black, f*ck off. If you hate this movie because, quote, you liked it better when it was called Battle Royale/Lord of the Flies, unquote, f*ck off. None of you will find anything of interest here, so your life will be better if you spend the next five minutes doing anything but reading this review.

Now, if you genuinely dislike, or even hate this movie because you think the script is dumb, the direction overbearing, the acting wooden, or anything else, please stick around. I’m not suggesting I’m going to change your mind, because I’m really not interested in changing your mind. I’m just here to give you mine and if you don’t agree, well, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s plenty of people out there who dislike HUNGER GAMES for completely valid reasons and I respect all of those people and all of those opinions.

I just don’t have time for anyone who wants to caustically dismiss a movie because it’s not something else, or because of one small item. I mean, great, Battle Royale had kids killing kids, too, but do you know what it didn’t have?

Just about everything else THE HUNGER GAMES does. It’s too easy to play the, “I liked this story better when it was called ________” card. Are there ripoffs? Sure. THE HUNGER GAMES isn’t one of them.

In the post-apocalyptic, rebuilt world of Panem, the United States (or maybe it’s all of North America) has been divided into twelve separate districts. Each year, a male and female kid (between the ages of 12 and 18) from each district is chosen at lottery to travel to the Capitol and kill each other in the Hunger Games. There’s only one winner. Everyone else dies. The lottery is called the Reaping, and all of the of-age kids gather in a town square to see the name pulled at random from a bowl. On this year, for the 74th Hunger Games, the female tribute from District 12 is Primrose Everdeen (Willow Shields), a mousy 12-year old in the lottery for the first time.

Unable to bear the thought of her sister in the Games, Katniss Everdeen rushes forward to volunteer to take her sister’s place. Gary Ross does a phenomenal job quickly building up this moment. Prior to Katniss’ volunteering, we see how tough life is in District 12. Food is not guaranteed, and Katniss hunts with her friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth) to put dinner on their table. Katniss and Prim’s father has died in a coal mining accident and their mother has bouts of uselessness as she’s overcome with her husband’s absence.

Ross shows us the poverty of District 12 and the beauty of the surrounding natural landscape. (The districts are cordoned off and going outside the district gates is forbidden.) The district has a washed out, muted look, full of greys and browns and dull blues. Clothes are old. Houses are ramshackle cabins. The whole vibe is like a late-19th/early-20th century community built on coal mining. In the middle of it sits Katniss, a proud teenage girl who’s had to assume the mantle of leadership in her family after her father’s death. She talks to Prim, keeping her as calm as possible, and helps her dress in her Sunday best for the Reaping.

When Prim’s name is pulled out of the lottery bowl by Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), Ross masterfully depicts Prim’s horror and the gravity of this decision by having the girls around her slowly back away, instantly isolating her from the community. Katniss steps forward to volunteer and we begin to see the disconnect in Panem between the residents of a lower-class place like District 12 against the upper-class elitists that actually enjoy the Games. To Katniss, Prim, male tribute Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), and the rest of this community, the Reaping is the annual Worst Day of the Year because everyone in D12 knows that they’re sending off two of their children to die.

All because of a failed rebellion 74 years and the government’s insistence on never letting them forget it.

From the Capitol side of the equation, however, the Reaping is the start of the annual Best Time of the Year. Effie is all smiles and bubbles greeting Katniss to the stage, while the young girl is completely shocked and overwhelmed by what’s just transpired. This disconnect between how the poorer districts and the Capitol treat the Games is seen repeatedly in the film. It’s an artful balance on Ross’ part between the kids who largely don’t want to be here killing each other and the Capitol’s elite who love watching them kill each other.

After Katniss says a quick goodbye to her sister, mother, and then Gale (who promises to look after Prim), she and Peeta are hurried onto the train that will take them cross country to the Capitol. You can feel how uncomfortable Katniss and Peeta are among all of the opulence on the train. We see Katniss, the girl who has to hunt for squirrels to feed her family, suddenly surrounded by all manner of ornate and beautiful food. On the train, the tributes are introduced to their coach, the last Hunger Games winner from District 12, Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), who’s a bit of an uninterested lush.

Once they get to the Capitol there’s lots of public interviews and training and trying to find themselves amid all the glamour of the Games and the stark reality of what’s coming. It’s this middle section that’s the weakest part of the film for me, but it’s also sort of perfect because it reminds us of the absurdity of this situation and the fact that Katniss and Peeta are still kids. It’s hard enough knowing who you are when you’re 16, let alone when you suddenly find yourself a celebrity in a strange land about to put your life on the line. The film perfectly places Katniss and Peeta (though it should be noted the film is really Katniss’ film, and Peeta occupies the role of lead secondary character) in between the “Careers,” the tributes from the richer districts who spend their life training to volunteer for the Games, and the younger kids who know they have no chance. Katniss and Peeta are somewhere in between, good enough to not be easy meat but not good enough to be immediate favorites.

Things start to change when Katniss catches the eye of the crowd. The folks of the Capitol treat this as a spectacle, with Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) and occasionally Claudius Templesmith (Toby Jones) emceeing the festivities. Katniss is uncomfortable being transformed into “the girl on fire” as her stylist Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) creates elaborate costumes for her that win the crowd’s attention. Katniss does her part, too, like when the Games’ oddsmakers don’t pay attention to her so she shoots an arrow through an apple in a pig’s mouth on a table in the judges’ area.

All of this spectacle and selling oneself is important to gaining sponsors among the elite that can help a tribute survive the Games. It’s an important part of the novel and an important aspect of the absurdity of the Games, but it also bogs the film down just a bit. What works in this section is the confusion between Katniss and Peeta. During his solo interview with Caesar, Peeta reveals that he’s always had a crush on Katniss, which casts the two of them as “the starcrossed lovers” for the audience. Katniss is not happy with this turn because she’s unsure if Peeta is being truthful or if it’s just a ploy to build a bankable narrative for the crowd.

When we get to Act 3 and the actual Games, Ross proves himself capable of filming a decent action sequence. The violence is largely minimized – the film sacrificing raw brutality for emotional response. It’s a strategy that works for me, though there is something to be said about forcing the audience to witness the deaths. Getting to see the kills in quick glimpses works for me, though, because the violence of the Hunger Games is there to be enjoyed by the interior audience of the Capitol and reviled by the interior audience of the various districts around Panem. For us out here in the exterior, I don’t think we need the violence reinforced; what we need to see is how the deaths effect Katniss, and we get that in abundance.

The most emotional part of the film comes when Katniss befriends Rue (Amandla Stenberg), the youngest female tribute. Katniss sees a bit of her sister in Rue, but Rue is much more capable of taking care of herself. When the Careers trap Katniss in a tree overnight, it’s Rue who shows Katniss how to save herself by dropping a nest of tracker jackers into the middle of the sleeping Careers. Katniss gets stung, too, and Rue helps her heal and watches over her. Katniss concocts a plan to strike back at the Careers, but the plan goes awry and Rue ends up getting killed by Career tribute Marvel (Jack Quaid), who then gets killed by Katniss.

Rue’s death devastates Katniss, and she honors the death of the young girl with a song and flowers, then looks into the camera and flashes a sign that causes a riot in Rue’s home district. There’s no moment in the film that matches the intensity of THE HUNGER GAMES like this one, and as much as I’d been enjoying the film and as much as I’d been carried along with the story, it was this moment of a devastated, defiant Katniss looking into that camera and connecting with the citizens of District 11 that I knew I was watching a truly special film.

Growing wise in the ways of audience manipulation, Katniss cares for an injured Peeta, taking advantage of a rule change that allows for two winners of the Games as long as they’re from the same district. She channels her own growing confusion over her feelings for Peeta into a performance for the people at home. Instead of coming off as a romance, Katniss’ manipulation of Peeta serves as a bookend for Peeta introducing the whole starcrossed-lovers story line. Her kiss for the camera is the film’s most downbeat moment as it reveals a new side of Katniss, a maturing girl who is learning how to treat the very deadly Games as a game in order to curry favor with potential sponsors. It’s a true loss-of-innocence moment for Katniss as the transformative power of the Games is revealed. Katniss and Peeta win the Games, but then the rules change again, reverting to the “one victor only” dictum. Refusing to fight, they threaten to go all Romeo and Juliet double suicide before the Gamesmaster Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) steps in to allow them both to survive.

From start to finish, THE HUNGER GAMES is a beautifully shot and acted film. Gary Ross’ direction is simply fantastic, knowing when to let the camera linger and when to use a shaky cam to enforce the chaos of the situation. I love the technique of going quiet in loud moments, and Ross uses it a couple times here to great effect. I generally despise weird costumes and weird haircuts in my sci-fi, but HUNGER GAMES makes it work because it highlights the wide disconnect between life in the Capitol and life in District 12. There are an entire host of good performances by veteran actors here, led by a quietly menacing Donald Sutherland as President Coriolanus Snow. I have so much respect for actors like Woody Harrelson, Liam Hemsworth, and even Lenny Kravitz for hitting the perfect notes in smaller roles. Ross gets the exact performance he needs out of all his actors, but these three are vital to showing how Katniss manages to connect with people.

Jennifer Lawrence is magnificent as Katniss, instantly drawing me into the movie and making me believe fully in this character. Katniss is tough, resilient, and continually overwhelmed by the Capitol, by Peeta’s love for her, for the Games, but she’s never defeated. She manages to take her own personal pain and give it to the world, and even though she turns manipulative later in the Games, you can also see that she’s genuinely confused by her growing attraction towards Peeta and bothered by playing to the audience at home.

I love nearly everything about THE HUNGER GAMES. Gary Ross and Jennifer Lawrence have combined their talents to produce a very special movie. THE HUNGER GAMES is incredibly moving, heartbreaking, and uplifting. It’s also an incredibly serious film, deeply disturbing in its content, but also insightful about contemporary culture. Truthfully, THE HUNGER GAMES isn’t a great time at the theater in the conventional blockbuster sense; this isn’t a big, fun, action romp of a popcorn flick, and if you go in expecting that I think there’s a very good chance you’ll leave disappointed. I saw this film and The Cabin in the Woods on back-to-back days and while both movies share a similar premise (adults manipulating the death of teenagers), Drew Goddard’s film is the better popcorn film.

Make no mistake, however, that THE HUNGER GAMES is the better movie and a brilliant film.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER: The Insanity of the Plan Makes No Difference

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) – The 5th Marvel Cinematic Universe Film – Directed by Joe Johnston – Starring Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Stanley Tucci, Kenneth Choi, Bruno Ricci, J.J. Field, Toby Jones, Richard Armitage, Samuel L. Jackson, and Stan Lee.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER is a very good movie, and certainly takes its rightful place alongside THOR and IRON MAN as appropriately awesome AVENGERS movies, but as with most of director Joe Johnston’s work, I never believe this world actually exists. It too often feels like we’re watching an old propaganda feature rather than a contemporary movie.

There’s a scene late in the movie where Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) wakes up. He’s just crashed the Red Skull’s plane and we know he’s gone missing and we know that he’s found in our present, but the room looks like the 1940s. There’s a building outside and a baseball game on the radio and a woman who looks a bit like Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) comes in to check on him. Steve asks where he is, she lies, and he breaks out, discovering that he’s actually in a false room inside a New York skyscraper.

It’s a movie set, if you will, and it’s the perfect symbol of how I feel about this entire movie. Whatever happens, wherever it happens, its like watching a simulacrum of reality instead of a fully-realized world.

Now, that’s not to say that this is a bad movie, because it’s not. Far from it. CAPTAIN AMERICA is a highly enjoyable movie, with an earnest performance from Chris Evans leading the best ensemble cast in any of the Marvel movies, so far. But I never feel like I’m not on a movie set; there’s a … a cleanness, if you will, to the proceedings here. Everything looks newly constructed; even the old buildings look artificially old, like they’re copies that have been aged to fool pawn brokers.

That’s a minor, but consistent quibble with CAPTAIN AMERICA, but the larger weakness is that the film isn’t balanced properly. The first half of the movie is the origin and the second half is the World War II action versus Hydra, and because Johnston spends so much time building up the front of the movie, the back-half falls flat to me. The action is fine, but the Howling Commandos are just costumes lacking personalities, with only Bucky (Sebastian Stan) becoming someone real. The result is that while all of the punching and kicking and shooting is impressively done, very little here feels like it has to involve the characters we’re watching.

What makes me feel conflicted about the film is that the origin half of the movie is very well done, but it’s the least interesting half. By now, we’ve seen enough superhero movies that I feel like the origin stories could be condensed and we could get on with the actual story. It takes something like 45 minutes to get Steve into a Cap costume, and then another 15 or so to get him into action. None of this first hour is poorly told. Johnston does an excellent job demonstrating the determination of the normal, weakling Steve Rogers, a kid continually trying to get himself enlisted into the United States military and continually getting rejected. Steve’s determination is noticed by Professor Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who lets him into the army because he thinks Steve might possess the qualities he’s looking for in order to create the first American Super Soldier.

It just takes the narrative too darn long to get Steve to the procedure that will turn him into the Super Soldier. We have to sit through Steve getting beat up, Steve getting rejected, Steve being dour as Bucky spends his late night in the city, Steve going to boot camp, Steve being doubted, Steve proving himself, Steve and Erskine having a heart-to-heart, Steve being driven to the procedure, Steve undergoing the procedure, the procedure being successful, a Hydra spy revealing himself, shooting Erskine, and then Steve chasing the Hydra assassin down. All of it conveys the same message over and over again to ill effect; since we see Steve getting his ass handed to him by a bully, we don’t really need to hear him tell Peggy 30 minutes later that he used to get beat up a lot. It’s “show, don’t tell,” not “show, and then tell.”

It’s well told, it’s even decently paced as you’re watching it, but then we have to sit through Colonel Phillips refusing to put Cap into action despite his obvious physical qualities, so United States Senator Brandt turns Steve into Captain America and uses him to sell war bonds. We get a nice musical number and then Cap (for some reason) gets sent to the front lines where Colonel Phillips and Peggy Carter just happen to be, in order to entertain the troops. The troops could give a crap about the costumed mascot, which depresses Cap.

This short section of the film has a good song and dance number, but it feels too mechanical and contrived, and eats up too much time.

Things start to pick up when Steve insists on knowing from Colonel Phillips whether Bucky has been captured. With encouragement from Agent Carter and assistance Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), Steve drops in on Hydra and busts all of the prisoners free. We get our first encounter with the Commandos, who are likewise trapped in Hydra’s cages, but while they become Cap’s team going forward, we don’t really get to know any of them. They’re only guys in uniforms, seemingly put together because they all have unique looks.

I’m going to stop here and level with you – I originally watched CAPTAIN AMERICA a couple months ago, but I’ve been putting off writing the review because I feared it would turn out like it has, seemingly more negative than I intended. I want to repeat – again – that this is a very good movie, but it’s not as good as IRON MAN or THOR. It’s like comparing Spider-Man 2 to Spider-Man; they’re both good movies but 2 is a bit better than 1 because it gives us a fully-realized story, and does so in a more confident manner, instead of covering what feels like well-worn ground as all of the creative types try to find their way.

I’ve watched CAPTAIN AMERICA since then, not wanting to write a negative review of a good film without giving it a few more tries. I appreciate the film more now, but in a different context. It doesn’t work for me as much as a superhero movie as it does an old matinee. I feel like Johnston has crafted a wonderful ode to the old matinee films that Steve is watching at the start of the movie that leads to him getting beat up. And let me be clear – this is a good thing. We should want superhero movies to show variety, and that the three AVENGERS movies are clearly made on the same blueprint but give us a different setting and work with different genres is a good thing. CAPTAIN AMERICA does that, at the same time it gives us a great character and tells a decent story. Perhaps my complaints are more like spending a night playing poker and going home disappointed because you’ve won $40 instead of $50. The film clearly has left me conflicted, but I think it’s a film I’ll grow to appreciate more over time. It’s not as good as IRON MAN or THOR but it is still good. Here’s why:

Chris Evans is a good, if limited actor at this stage in his career, but if you keep your demands in his range, he’s quite good, and CAPTAIN AMERICA keeps it in his range. He can do earnest and he can do determined, and that’s what’s asked of him in nearly every scene he’s in. (He can also do funny pretty good, but they don’t ask much of him in this regard in this movie.) He makes Steve an almost-too-good-to-be-believed guy, which is just what Steve Rogers is, and he does a fine job making this a “coming of age” story as Steve grows not only into his body but his abilities. At the start of the movie he’s a determined weakling whom everyone keeps rejecting, but when he gets his new, souped-up body, he’s put in his place by Phillips and Carter, then turned into a prop by Brandt, and then rejected by the soldiers. It’s Carter that inspires him to go after Bucky and once Cap pulls that off, once the soldiers accept him, his confidence rises and solidifies.

Hayley Atwell is fantastic as Peggy Carter, and Johnston and his writers do a good job of keeping her a solid character through the film. She falls in love with Steve, of course, but she doesn’t lose either her sense of self or her agency (unlike what happens to Jane Foster over in THOR). Atwell provides a good deal of the film’s humor, whether it’s punching a recruit in the face, or shooting a gun at Cap’s unpainted shield, and when it comes time for her to get teary-eyed over Steve’s impending death, she delivers that, as well.

Tommy Lee Jones is good as Colonel Phillips, playing the gruff, military man. It takes Phillips the longest to come around to Steve’s abilities, but when Steve brings the prisoners of war back to base, Phillips instantly comes around. It’s a really great moment and makes Phillips more than a one-note hard ass. Jones’ best scene in the film, however, comes when he’s interrogating Arnim Zola (Toby Jones). After Cap and the Commandos capture Zola off a Hydra plane, Jones gives him the hard sell in order to get intel on Hydra. Jones #2 is fantastic as Zola, a brilliant scientist who’s both intimidated by the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and wary of Hydra’s plan to take over the world, and their back and forth is short but sweet.

Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull is suitably menacing, twisted, and brilliant, but his best moments come early in the film. By the time of his final showdown with Captain America, he’s just a bad guy getting punched.

I could go on about the acting, but the point is that this is a very well cast film and it’s the performances that will keep me coming back. The front half of the film is the better half but also the least-interesting half. I care more about the last hour of the movie, but it feels rushed and clinical. What I like about the film is that it keeps staying entertaining, meaning that for whatever flaws it has in my eyes, CAPTAIN AMERICA is still a highly watchable movie. I’ll take that. When you factor in just how good it is to watch Evans, Atwell, and Jones play off one another, and the decent action sequences, I realize I’m probably nitpicking a bit too much.

If you want to say this is better than THOR, I can understand that. I just don’t agree with it. Ultimately, though, they’re both good films and are both fine additions to the growing canon of Marvel movies.

Be sure to check out the Superhero Review Index for all Superhero movie reviews at Atomic Anxiety!

THE CORE: It’s Not a Stupid Ship

The Core (2003) – Directed by Jon Amiel – Starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, DJ Qualls, Tchéky Karyo, Bruce Greenwood, Richard Jenkins, and Alfre Woodard.

THE CORE is a surprisingly satisfying film, although it comes off as the cinematic equivalent of the 8th inning of a Major League Baseball All-Star game, with it’s odd mix of not-quite-superstars and solid veterans playing in a game the league insists is important even though everyone is just watching because they like baseball and it’s the only game being played for three days.

It’s an odd film to watch, because it’s a science-fiction film that acts likes it’s using real science but sounds like it’s using made up words and disproved theories. There’s a scene that seems to sum up the film’s approach to science perfectly. Dr. Josh Keyes (Eckhart) has just given a briefing explaining that the Earth’s core has stopped spinning, meaning everyone on the planet is going to die. Keyes, Dr. Zimsky (Tucci), and General Purcell (Jenkins) are letting this hit them, and going over ideas on how to restart the core. (Yes, restart the core of the planet like it’s a dead engine on a ’95 Honda Civic.) Anyway, they come up with an idea and Keyes says, “It doesn’t matter! Even if you could restart the core, there’s no way to get there!”

Zimsky smiles and asks, “But what if you could?”

And awaaaaaaaaay we go!

All the science experts seem to say it’s nonsense science, but I didn’t sit down in front of my TV to get a science lesson from THE CORE – I sat down to be entertained, and THE CORE is an awesome Saturday afternoon flick for folks who want to watch a fun film with impossible science. I don’t understand why scientists seem to get so smug about the “non-science” presented in a film like this – isn’t inspiring kids to dig science awesome? Even if it’s with shoddy science? What are these complainers worried about? That the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club is going to convene after school and build a train that they only think can take them safely to the center of the planet when, in reality, it will actually crush them? THE CORE is like a sci-fi film from the 1950s or ’60s, where it’s the idea that matters far more than the realistic mechanics to execute that idea. The center of the planet has stopped spinning. What’s not to love about that?

The joy of films like this, which beautifully melds an “impossible science” idea like Fantastic Voyage with the disaster film vibe of The Day After Tomorrow (which I haven’t reviewed, but maybe we’re due for some disaster movie reviews …), is in seeing the characters figure out, and then execute the impossible. There isn’t a machine in reality like Virgil that can penetrate down through the Earth to get to the core? Who gives a damn? It’s not like there really are spaceships propelled by warp drive engines, or spaceships pretending to be police boxes that are bigger on the inside, or dogs that will perform tricks AFTER getting bribed with a snack. (I mean, it’s just totally unrealistic to see dogs being given their treats before a trick rather than after it. Some people don’t know jack about training dogs.)

All I really care about in a disaster movie is that you present me with a cool scenario and then you have your characters figure their way out of it. In THE CORE, they decide the best way to restart the core is to let off some nuclear bombs. But once they pass into the outer layer of the core they realize their calculations on this layer’s density are wrong and they don’t have enough ka-pow! to get the job done. (Honestly, they couldn’t have called this movie THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED SPINNING or something to keep me from writing “the core” 82 times in this review?) The solution they come up with is to take the bombs they have and instead of setting off one massive explosion, they’ll set off a series of explosions that will cause a ripple effect, whereby the power of one bomb becomes reinforced by the next one, creating an energy wave that-

Does it matter? It looks cool on the simulation they run and it looks cool when they detonate the bombs and it generates plenty of popcornish tension in between those two points. The filmmakers push their luck a bit on this point by having Keyes say that this plan will only work if they put the warheads in EXACTLY the right place and detonate them at EXACTLY the right time, using words that start with “milli-” so you know just how important and impossible it is, and it’s a step we don’t need. They’re driving through the planet in a giant high-speed train, after all, rocketing through layers of rocks and molten magma – I think we can still be suitably impressed if they miss their mark by a couple of feet.

THE CORE is a wonderfully cast movie but perhaps a completely miscast movie, too. There’s lots of ways to cast disaster movies – you can take the Towering Inferno all-star approach, the Twister we-hope-they-become-stars approach, the Poseidon Adventure serious-actor-surrounded-by-recognizable-faces approach, and on and on. The key, it seems, is to find the right balance between actors and effects; in other words, the key is in recognizing if its the actors or the effects that are going to be the star, and then cast your film appropriately. THE CORE’s approach is to find a bunch of really good actors, add DJ Qualls to the mix, and then have effects that are cool but not eye-dropping.

They fill the cast with people like Eckhart, Swank, Lindo, Tucci, Greenwood, Woodard, and the vaguely recognizable French guy, and then shove them inside a subway train made of unobtanium with a giant laser on the front, and drop them through the planet where the effects are cool but repetitive – there’s only so many ways you can pass through rock and magma and stay fresh. (Perhaps that’s why the film gives us a bunch of elongated scenes on Earth that we don’t need – like birds dropping out of the sky or crazy lightning ravaging a city. It’s an attempt to deliver more of a visual punch.) The highlight is undoubtedly the room of purple crystal that they crash into, and the magma flow that starts dripping, then pouring down on them from the hole they just punched, but you’re just not going to have a lot of opportunities for them to get out and look around inside the planet. With the lack of showstopping fireworks from the diving train, maybe the film would have been better with a less-realistic, more ridiculous cast. All of the actors look like they really could be what their roles demand but they don’t provide enough interpersonal fireworks to help prop up the CGI.

Don’t misunderstand – I appreciate the fact that they’re using Eckhart, Swank, and Lindo instead of Cruise, Diaz, and Jackson, and for me it makes it a better film (which is ultimately what I care about) but I can see how that lack of star power (and lack of star personality) hurt the film at the box office and contributes to the film suffering from a bit of cinematic bloatedness. (But then, it’s a disaster movie and disaster movies love to be bloated.) By having actors instead of stars, and by having actors who are more introverted than extroverted, you need to offer a bit more in the effects department to bolster a film. For instance, Bruce Greenwood and Hilary Swank play the two astronauts and they are every bit as serious as you would expect astronauts to be, but Greenwood and Swank both work better when they’re playing off a bigger personality, and THE CORE doesn’t give them someone to make their reassuring calmness play as effectively as it could. Lindo and Tucci are old colleagues turned rivals, but even with Tucci trying to be over-the-top, the antagonism produced between them are more like tiffs in the teacher’s lounge over coffee filters instead of “you sold me out” anger. Maybe if they had bigger personalities, or a bigger set of conflicts inside the ship, we could have had a tighter, more focused movie instead of the 135 minute film that contains a set-up that takes a bit too long to get going and a conclusion that takes a bit too long to stop.

What comes in between, however, is a highly enjoyable Saturday afternoon throwback film. From the moment Dr. Keyes is brought in to Washington the second time right through to the series of explosions that restart the Earth’s core, THE CORE is a thrilling sci-fi disaster flick.