Aaron Eckhart: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

And 5 That Sucked...

5. Dr. Josh Keyes - The Core (2003)

The late-1990s and early-2000s saw the disaster movie make a big comeback. But where once this genre had given us comparatively well-written works like The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, this wave gave us Twister, Armageddon and that terrible remake of Godzilla. The Core is less imfamous than some of these films, but it's just as bad - or just as stupid, at any rate. The Core imagines a world in which the rotation of the Earth's core has stopped, meaning that within a year the planet's magnetic field will collapse, irradiating everything. A team of scientists led by Dr. Josh Keyes (Eckhart) tunnel down towards the centre of the Earth to plant nuclear charges which will restart the core's rotation. Things only get sillier from there, involving a plot twist about government-controlled earthquakes and a material called Unobtanium - adding it to the long list of films that James Cameron ripped off when he was making Avatar. While The Core isn't as head-bangingly awful as Armageddon, it's still a pretty bad film. Jon Amiel is a decent dramatic director, having made his name on TV with The Singing Detective, but he's out of his depth in a special effects-laden blockbuster. Eckhart doesn't help matters either, turning in a wooden performance and looking far too buff and chiselled to pass for a working geologist. Overall it's dull, forgettable fare which can't hold a candle to Journey to the Centre of the Earth (the original version, in case you were wondering).