Although the Core came out in 2003 it seems more like a product of the mid-late 90s disaster films. Similar look, basic premise and big stars- recipe for the holiday blockbuster. But The Core was panned by critics as I recall and one look at the wiki page tells me it was a box office dud failing to recoup its production budget. But it's alright film if you can shut your brains down. It's so bad its good and for such films scientific accuracy or common sense should not be used.

The Core intrigued me originally, but it ultimately did not live up to my expectations. The cast, I actually quite liked, I liked Hilary Swank, and Eckhart, and Tucci, I thought they all had good chemistry together, and I enjoyed Alfre Woodward's performance too. The effects, as you can tell from the film's poster, run pretty rampant here. They are just fine when they are in the core and the audience is seeing lava and humongous crystals, and the ship flying looks fine too. There were however a few parts where the effects just didn't look all that good, even for 2003. So the effects are like a 70/30, so it leans in the right direction. The issue I take with The Core is that whenever an action packed/effects driven scene isn't going on, there just isn't any good dialogue or engaging characters. The actors really do give it their all, but the source material just is not that good or deep at all. The characters really do seem like cardboard cut outs, not much depth to them, some good cool depth behind the different characters would've been great to see! 6/10 for The Core. Not quite :/

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.

Strange things start happening around the Earth; everybody with a heart pacemaker in one area drops dead at the same time, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square start attacking people then the navigation systems for a space shuttle almost cause it to crash; only some quick thinking by the copilot, Major Rebecca Childs, prevent a tragedy. Government agencies summon Dr. Josh Keyes, a geologist to ask if it could be caused by an enemy weapon; he reassures them that it couldn't but further research gives a far more worrying reason… it would appear that the Earth's core has stopped rotating and if it can't be restarted in three months the planet is doomed! He believes this is impossible but a scientist, Dr. Edward Brazzelton, who has been working on a project by himself may have the answer; a craft that can travel through solid rock and molten magma to deliver a nuclear payload to the Earth's inner core! A team of six, which includes Keyes, Childs and Brazzelton, will take the craft, known as Virgil, into the centre of the Earth dealing with an assortment of problems on the way; inevitably not all of them would make it.The problem with most disaster movies it that they take themselves far too seriously… after seeing a shuttle being landed in the LA river I knew that wasn't going to be a problem here. The science on show is so far-fetched it is quite funny… one certainly has to be willing to put your brain in neutral to enjoy this but if you can it is rather fun. Once the more serious effects of the problem become apparent we gets some typical disaster movie scenes; Rome is destroyed in an electrical storm and the Golden Gate Bridge is microwaved to destruction These sort of things may be disaster movie clichés but at least we avoid the worst cliché of the genre… seeing ordinary people as main characters as they try to escape the problem… the only people dwelt on are those solving the problem. The cast do a decent enough job so we care enough about the characters. Overall this may not be a great movie but it is worth watching on TV or picking up if the DVD is in the bargain bin.