The end of the world

I have said it before and I will say it again: there are certain movies that you know exactly what you are getting before you even step foot in the theater.

Sometimes it’s the title that gives it away: “Snakes on a Plane,” “Beerfest,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Other times, it’s the cast: if Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey are the first-billed stars, odds are you are in for a 90 minute rom-com chock full of suit-wearing Manhattanites and a gay best friend.

In the case of “2012,” it’s the trailers and television spots rather than the title or cast.

Following in the footsteps of “Deep Impact,” “The Core” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” “2012” is yet another movie that begs the age old question: when there is a volcano erupting to your left and a tidal wave pummeling toward you from the right, which way do you run?

And while this film’s response to that question may not be particularly original, it attempts to answer it in a breath of mildly fresh air.

The first part of that breath comes in the appearance of John Cusack, who plays Jackson Curtis, the fatherly protagonist who needs nothing short of a natural disaster to put his broken family back together again. 

Cusack doesn’t form-fit the role that’s been well-carved by actors in this genre before him, but it’s refreshing to see someone known for their quirky comedy roles take on a doomsday picture like this.

For whatever reason (the film chalks it up to heightened activity on the surface of the sun), the world is coming to an end.

As we’ve come to expect, this entails cataclysmic events like enormous tidal waves and fault lines splitting open.

Just like its predecessors’ plots, “2012” incorporates an ensemble of interlinked characters spread out around the globe.

There is the “scientist who predicted all of this,” Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the “skeptical bureaucrat” Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), the “ex-wife of the protagonist” Kate Curtis (Amanda Peet) and of course, the American president himself, played by Danny Glover (it’s interesting to note that when “Deep Impact” came out in 1998, it also featured a black president played by Morgan Freeman, which at the time seemed very progressive and innovative; to put a non-white male as commander in chief and not play it for irony or laughs).

That is a cursory overview of the plot, but that is really all you need to enjoy this movie, and that’s being generous.

The other part of that aforementioned “breath” is the fact that unlike many of the “end-of-the-world” films from that last 10 years (or since our CGI capabilities have caught up to our imaginations) is that “2012” is unflinching in what it chooses to show us. Somehow films of the past seem to almost sugar-coat these disasters and keep the camera in a wide-angle to avoid real detail of the human devastation.

Without ruining some of the best (worst?) moments in the film, you WILL see people falling like lemmings into vast crevices beneath the Earth; you WILL see a large, unnamed (for spoiler purposes) basilica in Vatican City crush thousands of praying people.

What you won’t see is a revamp of the structural formula for these types of films.

“2012” still benefits from an exciting first two acts but feels weighed down with plot and narrative climax in the third.

There’s a certain sadistic point that you reach as a viewer when you become disappointed as the film deviates from the tidal-wave violence and concentrates more on John Cusack mending his relationship with his son.

The producers seem to be learning though, because once the action starts it really doesn’t stop, and that proves to be just enough to push you through all 158 minutes.

1 comments

DaphneJM

Fri Nov 13 2009 14:46

It is a sad to note that once again people, audience and this reviewer, are once subject to the influences , or better propaganda, of the "secular progressives"/extremism of the leftists in Hollywood these days. Even the reviewer speaks to the a moral issue about the movie but only at the end of it related to the relationship between the Cusack character and his spilt up family. What about all the other many morality points made throughout the movie, e.g. watching the destruction of a most revered basilica in Vatican City that is shown in motion directed at 'towering' over and 'killing' people, or the many other not-so-sublte scenes and symbols throughout the flick? gjeez, when are people going to wake up and stop sending their hard earned dollars to the fat pockets of these Hollywoodites who eschew everything that the right or even right leaning in this country holds sacred? Actually, they do more than eschew it, they denegrate it as much as possible and try to influence and infiltrate the minds and hearts of innocent people looking for a couple of hours of 'entertainment' from a movie by reaching their sub-conscious and audio-visual memory receptors with their own personal agenda and belief systems. I for one am so sick and tired of this propaganda that I no longer spend any money for any such flicks out of Hollywood and pray for the days when there are better movies made, like many of that industry's early years.

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