2012 Movie Review
UK, November 9, 2009 - It never rains but it pours in Roland Emmerich films. Then it floods. With boiling hot lava flowing from giant volcanoes. The man who has made a living obliterating cities in the likes of Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow is at it again with 2012, a mega-bucks special effects bonanza about the end of the world.
Theatrical Release:
Friday, November 13, 2009 (Wide; 3,000 theaters)
Starring:
view full cast John Cusack
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Oliver Platt
Danny Glover
Woody Harrelson
Directed by:
Roland Emmerich
Genres:
Drama Action Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi Family
SYNOPSIS Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists, and governments. "2012" is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.
The film's title refers to the year in which the centuries-old Mayan calendar concludes. Emmerich and his co-screenwriter Harald Kloser take this date as a warning from the past - a prophecy of some cataclysmic event that will annihilate the planet - and start their story there.
John Cusack unlocks his inner action hero in 2012.
In this case, it's solar eruptions. The film kicks off with scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) travelling to India's Institute of Astro Physics where he makes a devastating discovery; the earth's core is heating up at such at such a rate that our days are numbered and elimination is imminent.
He takes this news to White House chief-of-staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), who in turn delivers the information to President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) and before you can say 'apocalypse now', Helmsley has become the President's chief science advisor, making him pretty much the most important man on the planet.
Cue foreboding scenes of the world's leaders discussing the imminent 'end of days' at the G8 summit, an unspecified plan-of-action being put into place, and shady Sheiks making mysterious deals involving astronomical amounts of money.
Trouble is, while this premise throws up complicated moral questions about who deserves to know, and which members of society should be saved, the film never truly examines such issues, instead preferring to skate over them in simplistic fashion.
At the same time we are introduced to Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), an unsuccessful novelist whose marriage has long-ended and whose kids have ended up with their mother. While trying to reconnect with them during a weekend away, Curtis stumbles on the information that the government was keeping under wraps, and sets about trying to save his loved ones.
Then, after what seems like an interminable build-up, the carnage finally begins. It starts with cracks in the pavement, followed by minor seismic tremors and then full-blown earthquakes. They in turn trigger floods, tidal waves and tsunamis, with the world's coastal towns washed away just as the inland volcanoes start erupting.
Emmerich is a master at shooting these large-scale massacres, and they provide the movie's undoubted highlights. Indeed, it's impossible not to marvel at the scale of it all as Cusack - his family in tow - flee from destruction of biblical proportions in increasingly imaginative ways.
For those that way inclined it's truly demolition porn, with Christ the Redeemer taking a dive in Rio, the Sistine Chapel hitting the deck in Rome, and the White House being hit by a warship - yes a warship - in Washington.
It's spectacular stuff, the transition from practical effects to CGI and then back again seamless; the end of the world spectacle even topping Emmerich's own Day After Tomorrow, a film that 2012 closely resembles.
It as at this point however that the director has shot his celluloid load, and with an hour left, the film itself turns into something of a disaster. All anti-climax, the extended conclusion plays like a combination of The Poseidon Adventure and Titanic, while capturing neither the tension of the former nor the heartbreak of the latter. The only weak link is Danny Glover as the President, his delivery stilted; his inspiring Independence Day-style speech - featuring lines like "Today, we are one family stepping into the darkness forever" - raising laughs rather than the intended tears.
The result is a film that veers from the sublime to the ridiculous to the at times downright dull. Had some judicious editing been enforced, 2012 could have been the ultimate disaster pic; the Mount Everest of cinematic catastrophe. As it stands, it feels about 2012 minutes too long, a bloated epic that outstays its welcome long before the credits have rolled.
