I Watch Films: The Core

 

The Core

Geomagnetic events cause a mass death incident due to pacemaker failures. When the military hear it’s not a weapon they’re relieved but Dr Joshua Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) realises it could be a serious problem. He gets his results to Dr Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucchi) a scientist with political connections, who convinces the government; the Earth’s core is slowing down and so the magnetic field that protects the Earth from solar wind will stop causing the world to burn.

They come up with a daring plan to build a tunnelling machine to enter the core and set off nuclear bombs to restart it. They bring in Commander Robert Iverson and Major Rebecca Childs (Hilary Swank), astronauts who had to land the space shuttle in the Los Angeles River after a geomagnetic event sent them off course, also Dr Serge Leveque, nuclear weapons expert and Dr Edward Brazzleton, who designed the tunneller, and Zimsky stole credit from twenty years before. In addition they bring on board ultra-hacker “The Rat” to prevent panic.

It's an old-fashioned science fiction adventure film, lightly updated for the 21^st century. If the methods of going to the core are a bit more on the fiction than the science (and the hacking too) that’s not a huge flaw (sorry geophysicists). And they're certainly more modern than other digging films. It’s fun and occasionally silly but generally solid.

Watch This: Fun underground adventure with more modern geology and conspiracies and more
Don’t Watch This: Just charming people trying to solve problems