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Directed By
Roland Emmerich
Written By:
Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser
Cast:
John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oliver Platt, Morgan Lily, George Segal, John Billingsley, Thomas McCarthy, Patrick Bauchau, Jimi Mistry, Liam James, Johann Urb, Beatrice Rosen, Agam Darshi, Patrick Gilmore, Chin Han, Alexandra Castillo, Eve Harlow, Anna Mae Routledge, David Richmond-Peck, Marco Khan, Blu Mankuma, Alex Zahara, Lisa Lu, Henry O, Chang Tseng, Ryan McDonald, Ron Selmour, Zlatko Buric, Geoff Gustafson, Brandon Haas, Parm Soor, Sean Tyson, Rick Tae, Eddie L. Fauria, Ayana Haviv, Scott E. Miller, Anthony Bonaventura, Ryan Cook, Lea Deesing, Ric Govea, Karin Konoval, Jonathan Lane, Tom MacNeill, Jill Morrison, Andrew Moxham, Jessica Provencher, Larry Purtell, Dean Redman, Charlie Robson, Richard Schimmelpfenneg, Eric Shackelford, Robyn Jean Springer, Craig Stanghetta, Ian Thompson, Jody Thompson, Frank C. Turner
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2012 (2009)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
November 16th, 2009
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After the truly awful 10,000 BC, director Roland Emmerich has rebounded quite nicely, with his latest epic, '2012', his best, and most accomplished, feature since Independence Day, way back in 1996. I hated his re-imagining of Godzilla, but did slightly enjoy The Day After Tomorrow; that movie, and this one, are similar in the sense that they are based on inherently bad science, bad science that really borders on quackery, but is taken very seriously by characters who are passed off as prominent scholars in a specialized field, and get to explain this stuff to the audience.
The title refers to the year that some believe will mark the end of the world; the calendar used by the ancient Mayan civilization apparently ends on December 21, 2012, and so this is why that particular date has been cited so frequently in bizarre prophetic utterances by certifiable crackpots. The Mayans have been credited with predicting earthquakes and other events, much like Nostradamus, but any anthropologist who knows anything about Mayan culture can easily dispel these ridiculous claims.
This is not really a good film. I will not pretend that it is. It is silly, ludicrously far-fetched, spends too much time allowing its characters to narrowly escape situations that they could not plausibly ever survive in reality. However, it is consistently thrilling, and wonderfully entertaining, and my favorable opinion of it rests largely on those two things. Emmerich uses eye-popping (and undoubtedly expensive) special effects to create a series of rather astonishing set-pieces, which show the impressively detailed destruction of various environments, including large cities, and he is sure to include just about every conceivable natural disaster: earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanic eruptions, to name only a few.
Narrative events are set in motion when geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) makes a startling discovery at his dig site in India, and comes to the conclusion that the earth will experience a calamity in the near future; we meet him in 2009, so '2012' is not far off. He, of course, is not wrong, and has informed American president Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) of his concerns, and three years later, Wilson puts Adrian in charge of a special team assembled to investigate the problem and devise a solution, and trying to save a remnant of the human race.
Wilson's chief of staff, Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) plans on putting himself in one of the shelters constructed in China, which serve as repositories for valuable works of art and a wide assortment of animals, much like Noah's mythical ark, but rich people can buy their way inside, leaving a vast majority of their fellow mammals to perish. This is the first half of the story; the second half introduces sci-fi author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), who is taking his two children, Noah (Liam James) and Lilly (Morgan Lily) on a vacation to Yellowstone National Park. It is here that Jackson meets kooky (and uncouth) conspiracy theorist Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), who tells him that the government has been hiding news of the impending catastrophe.
From that moment, all hell breaks loose, and the West Coast begins to sink into the Pacific Ocean, and Jackson, his kids, ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and her new husband Gordon (Tom McCarthy) all try to get to China. Emmerich focuses mostly on the relatively generic landscape of Los Angeles, which has much fewer landmarks than Seattle, Chicago, or New York, which he avoids almost completely, perhaps fearing it would be inappropriate since 9/11.
Think of every disaster flick you have ever seen, from Earthquake, to Dante's Peak, to The Towering Inferno, to the Poseidon Adventure. Emmerich references them all; this plays almost like a tribute to the subgenre, and Emmerich covers all the bases. The family drama that unfolds in the Curtis clan is overly familiar, but Kate is shown to still have feelings for Jackson, and Gordon turns out to be a nice guy, who just happens to be an amateur pilot. Cusack makes for a reliable and interesting protagonist, but more effective, to me, is Ejiofor, as the virtuous but somewhat passive Adrian. That he eventually learns to overcome his passivity and go against his superiors, acting on his own impulses, is inevitable, however.
Thandie Newton is fetching in her few scenes as Wilson's daughter Laura. Harrelson, who was brilliant in the recent Zombieland, earns a demerit here for his goofy and irritating performance. At 158 minutes, '2012' admirably maintains its momentum, and never once did I glance at my watch, as I did with the intolerable Transformers 2. This should have been released during the summer, as it is a truly stupendous popcorn picture.
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 | Lloyd
Nov 21, 2009 2:50 PM
also wrote a review of 2012 
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| Jarrod, other than the effects and the sounds from the speakers, the longer this film continued the more i saw the disaster films EARTHQUAKE and THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE contained within the movie; for me it was nice to see black actors with a lot of long speaking roles, kudos to mr emmerich for that; also the film moved at a quickening pace and that was impressive, not to mention the humor there, like the one with schwarzenegger giving the press conference on tv, we were dying from laughter when that happened; as for amanda peete.....................snooz, sorry i don't like her, never have. |
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