Looks Good, But Nothing at "The Core"

Irwin Allen made a name for himself throughout the late sixties and seventies with the kind of film that begat "The Core," the "Earth-in-the-Lurch" disaster movie that opened this past weekend. There are moments in this film that he would have been proud of. I guess now would be a good time to mention that I'm NOT an Irwin Allen fan.

"The Core" starts out promisingly. The film is directed by Jon Amiel, whose "River's Edge" is in my mind an unsung classic. More than thirty different people in a several block radius drop dead at the same time. The military calls in Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart), a bedraggled college professor, to determine the link between the victims. "They all wore pacemakers," saith the Professor, and the military, satisfied that there's no terrorist link, sends him home.

Then the birds overseas wig out and cause rampant destruction by flying into windows and buildings, and something is definitely wrong with Mother Earth. Back to Dr. Keyes, who cuts open a peach pit and compares it to our Earth's core, which for some reason is no longer spinning. The resulting damage to our synchronicity will cause us to burn up in an unspecified, but decidedly brief, amount of time.

Then the movie establishes its rag-tag batch of misfits who will squabble and bicker and save the world, in that order. You've seen them all before