Military Movies - Military Times

Stunning effects, stunted people

How many different ways can one man destroy the planet? After triggering a new Ice Age in “The Day After Tomorrow” and unleashing an alien invasion in “Independence Day,” writer-director Roland Emmerich is back with “2012,” which may just be the new mother of all end-of-the-world films — at least in terms of sheer sensory thrills.

The scale of its awesome special effects is only hinted at in the film’s trailer, in which a limo races just ahead of a mammoth earthquake that is sending coastal California tumbling into the sea.

Other eye-poppers: Las Vegas is swallowed by a huge sinkhole; Yellowstone Park blows up into a gargantuan volcano on the scale of about a billion nukes; and a massive tidal wave sweeps up the Chesapeake and flushes out Washington, D.C. (Finally!)

The science laid out to explain all this — which the film claims Albert Einstein supported in theory — is straightforward. It’s about a rare planetary alignment that induces massive solar flares, which bombard Earth with neutrino particles that permeate to the liquid core and start heating it up like a cosmic microwave.

Eventually, Earth’s entire crust shakes loose; continental plates careen every which way, and stupendous tsunamis wash over every land mass, reaching all but the tallest mountain peaks.

As pure spectacle, “2012” is amazing. But that’s all it has to offer. Emmerich has never had much feel for characters, and here he’s jamming in a particularly soulless key on that score.

We start in 2009, when geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and fellow scientists first detect signs of the coming cataclysm, which they predict will hit in 2012.

A series of brief, disparate scenes that are connected later in the film takes us up to the eve of the fireworks, where we meet Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a writer whose obsession with his one published novel — which sold 455 copies — pushed away his wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily). Kate is remarried to Gordon (Tom McCarthy), a dweebish plastic surgeon.

Other characters include Danny Glover as the president; Thandie Newton as his strong-willed daughter; Oliver Platt as his imperious chief of staff; and George Segal and Blu Mankuma as a pair of lounge singers on a cruise ship in the Pacific.

The script has some good end-of-the-world zingers, but Emmerich has zero interest in his characters beyond their utility as props to be assailed by the special effects (though Woody Harrelson is a riot in a semi-cameo as a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist). That makes it tough for viewers to forge any emotional connection with any of these folks.

It hardly helps that the cast is not exactly A-list, though even top stars would be obliterated by the sheer weight of the special effects.

Yet for all the flaws in the human element, the biggest issue is Emmerich’s lack of restraint.

The film runs a punishing 160 minutes — at least 30 too long — and in its final hour soars from outrageous to ridiculous when it reveals the details of the top-secret survival plan that Earth’s leaders have cooked up in advance of the looming disaster.

It’s of biblical proportions. Literally. Think Noah.

Bottom line: “2012” is as visually stunning as it is emotionally stunted. If you’re OK with that, then have a blast.

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Rated PG-13 for intense disaster scenes and some bad language.