50 God-Tier Acting Moments Buried in Bad Movies
35. Stanley Tucci - The Core
Who doesn't love Stanley Tucci?
As well as sounding like a great guy in real life, he's also one of the very best character actors in the business. He has this wonderful ability to improve any and every movie he appears in, no matter how bad it is - The Core is a great example of this.
The Core is a movie so stupid it makes Armageddon (1998) look like a documentary, but, rather than being self-aware and witty like Armageddon was, it plays everything far too straight and winds up being unacceptably dull. As with most of the disaster movies released during the genre's last 90s/early 2000s boom, The Core does assemble an impressive cast, and though they nobly do their best, talents such as Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank are ultimately held back by the script.
Tucci, playing Dr. Conrad Zimsky, is the one actor who really rises above the weak material and has terrific screen presence right from the off. In the earlier scenes, he's hilariously arrogant. When things go south in the mission, he wins the audience's sympathy by effectively conveying Zimsky's fear of death, and finally, Tucci brings pathos to the character and makes his eventual self-sacrifice genuinely touching.
As such, the character who was meant to be the douchebag of the team is ultimately the movie's most likable character, and it's all down to Tucci.