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English, English SDH, French
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The world as we know it will soon come to an end. Reviewing a Disaster movie necessitates a delicate balancing act, unless a reviewer chooses to simply go all Godzilla on the movie and stomp it into oblivion without attempting to compartmentalize what the movie has and wants to offer versus what other pictures of varied genres and purposes have and want to offer. The Godzilla method would seem the du jour approach to a movie like Director Roland Emmerich's latest end-of-days Disaster picture 2012, his biggest and baddest movie yet, loaded with special effects and built around every Disaster movie clich้ in the book. Indeed, 2012 isn't really all that different at its core than any run-of-the-mill made-for-television Disaster miniseries -- which are, in fact, disasters of the cinematic kind -- save for the fact that its budget is bigger than the gross domestic products of some small nations and it comes complete with a collection of name actors, most of whom aren't yet past their primes or long since faded into irrelevancy a decade or two prior. The budget, the actors, the skilled director, and even a surprisingly moving -- but not all that deep -- script make 2012 the pinnacle of its genre, a genre that has seemingly become the laughingstock of the film industry considering the epically bad movies that keep popping up in theaters and on video store shelves and television sets. However, Emmerich seems determined to keep the Disaster genre afloat and give it some relevance, and he has indeed made himself into the father of the modern high-dollar Disaster movie, with 2012 being his most audacious effort yet.
In the year 2009, Scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Redbelt) becomes privy to information that neutrinos emanating from the sun are wrecking havoc on the Earth, causing its core to superheat. Fearful of the imminent natural disasters, Helmsley rushes to speak with Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt, Year One), the White House Chief of Staff and a man with the President's ear. Flash-forward to 2012, and limousine driver and unsuccessful author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack, Con Air) is taking his children to a getaway camping trip to Yellowstone National Park while his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet, Identity) works on her burgeoning relationship with plastic surgeon and amateur pilot Gordon Silberman (Tom McCarthy). At Yellowstone, Jackson meets a conspiracy theorist and small-time radio host named Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson, No Country For Old Men) who tells Jackson of the coming doom, allowing the father of two to get a head start on getting out of Dodge and heading for what Frost says is the last safe place on Earth. As Jackson races against time to save his family, he happens upon his wealthiest client, a Russian billionaire (Zlatko Buric) and his twin sons (Alexandre and Philippe Haussmann), his trophy girlfriend (Beatrice Rosen), and his personal pilot (Johann Urb), all of whom are headed to a secret facility that holds the key to mankind's survival. The group escapes death time and again to avoid a disaster that U.S. President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover, Saw) must finally announce to a panicked world that's begun crumbling around every corner. Not as endearing as Independence Day but not as politically-motivated as The Day After Tomorrow and not as lethargic as Godzilla, 2012 may be Emmerich's most well-balanced Disaster movie to date. Of all his pictures, it stands out as easily the most base of them all, where neither alien nor man nor a radioactive creature are the enemies but rather time and mother nature herself, and they prove to be Emmerich's most potent tandem of hostiles yet. Indeed, never before has so much been destroyed on such a grand scale and with such seamless special effects, and never before has so much death, destruction, and sheer chaos been this much fun. After the picture's slow but not sluggish open that introduces most of the film's major players -- the obligatory collection of the scientist, the President, the jerk, the broken family, the rich folks, the trophy girlfriend, and the conspiracy theorist -- 2012 begins a rip-roaring two additional hours of almost nonstop mayhem and special effects but manages to piece together a semblance of a heart and soul and develop its characters to the point that, when one or two of them inevitably kick the bucket, it actually matters and the sense of loss becomes surprisingly palpable. Still, Emmerich makes sure that the picture's emotions and characters live on the periphery where they belong in a movie like this, the director emphasizing the spectacle first and allowing everything else to fall into place as-needed and in the right time and context to achieve maximum effect with minimal interference to the dangers and disasters and visual effects that populate nearly every frame of the movie's second and third acts. 2012 may be mostly about collapsing buildings, flooding cities, and people surviving brushes with death in the middle near-miss after near-miss catastrophes, but it works not because of story -- this is absolutely nothing new, it's just that the picture plays out on an epically large scale -- but because it's been made with an eye towards detail and an insistence on making it bigger and better than anything that's come before it. 2012 is definitely a product of its budget, and every penny of its whopping $200,000,000 in funds was well-spent in the pursuit of building the most seamless Disaster movie of all time. Whether the physical sets or the computer-generated disaster zones, practically every shot within 2012's 158-minute runtime look fantastic, and the CGI meshes with the real-life actors and props seamlessly. This is definitely a hallmark effects film, and it's a shame it didn't make the cut for an Oscar nomination in said category, though it's hard to argue with the quality of effects as seen in Avatar, District 9, and Star Trek. Still, that doesn't change the fact that the special effects -- and their scale and intricate detail in particular -- will leave jaws agape as a plane or a speeding limousine maneuver through a crumbling city or an aircraft carrier tumbles atop a national landmark. It's spectacular stuff -- the reason the film was made, in fact -- and because it works so well, the movie, by extension, also works wonderfully for what it is and all it strives to be. Finally, 2012 boasts a fairly strong cast not only of name actors but actors that play their parts with a sincerity rather than simply coasting along and allowing the special effects to hide what could have been phoned-in performances. As-scripted, the characters are somewhat flat and the relationships clich้d at best and phony at worst, but the performers manage to add some needed but not necessary and certainly not overplayed depth to all of the primaries. There's a relatable aura about Cusack's character, the actor portraying an everyman that manages to escape one disaster after another, and even if the plausibility of such daring and dangerous escapes could only happen in the movies, his exploits make for exciting, blood-pumping, and crowd-cheering entertainment at a base level, which is this picture's singular goal. Mission accomplished. Cusack's character's relationship with his family might be pulled from the most overused plot device in the book, but Cusack makes it work just well enough within the blistering pace and the dark context the movie establishes. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Oliver Platt form a surprisingly strong good guy-bad guy tandem, both actors turning in honest performances and playing to their characters' traits and, ultimately, their final confrontation splendidly. Ejiofor in particular makes for a great hero in a movie like this, the actor giving not only thoughtfulness to the part but also a soul that convinces the audience of his intelligence, leadership, motivations, sincerity, and strength of morals. Woody Harrelson is the film's surprise performer, the actor seeming to have as much fun here as in Zombieland and milking the unfortunately small but memorable part for everything it's worth and then some, his character serving as the catalyst for the primary adventure while delivering a healthy dosage of comic relief. Danny Glover turns in the film's only dour performance as a President with the personality of a blank greeting card and a nonchalance toward a part that, admittedly, could have been better scripted to begin with
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