The End of It All Looks Pretty Good

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 2009)

Every year, there's at least one big studio, big budget movie that features high end special effects. Will the movie's story or actors be any good? Doesn't matter, because the special effects will be awesome! That's exactly what I was thinking when I saw this summer's Transformers sequel, and I was wrong. The movie, despite its superlative effects, was bad enough that it did matter. But that's okay; hope springs eternal, and I used the same argument as my excuse to see 2012. Fortunately, this time around I wasn't disappointed.
Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a government scientist who travels to India when a fellow scientist tells him there's something there he must see. Helmsley is floored by the data revealed and he rushes back to Washington where he promptly advises his boss we—the whole earth—have a problem. Helmsley's boss, Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) recognizes the importance of what he's told and promptly takes Helmsley directly to President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) himself. Big decisions are quickly made and secretly set in motion. Meanwhile...
Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) is an unsuccessful novelist who pays the bills as the chauffeur of a wealthy Russian businessman. But at the moment, he's far more concerned with picking up his children from his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and her new husband (Tom McCarthy) for a trip to Yellowstone National Park, something it's all too clear the kids don't want to do.
Once at the park, Jackson arrives where his memory tells him he should be, but things look different, and the area is literally crawling with scientists and soldiers. After a brief conversation and a warning, Jackson and the kids are released. They've set up an uncomfortable camp and the kids are complaining about mosquitoes when Jackson hears something in the woods that turns out to be local conspiracy theorist, Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson). After sharing a beer or two with the man, Jackson escapes back to his own camp and his disgruntled children.
Jackson's vacation is suddenly cut short when he gets a call from his ex-wife asking him to bring the children home. A spate of earthquake activity in California has her spooked, and she wants the kids at her side. Jackson does as she asks, but his mind is starting to spin and he tries to connect the dots between all of the odd things that have happened and that he's learned over the course of the last few days. Of course, it's right about then that all hell breaks loose.
John Cusack isn't, by any stretch, my favorite action actor. But he was oddly perfectly cast in this action movie. He somehow has the ability to play "everyman" on screen which makes us all relate more closely to him no matter the extremities of the circumstances in which he finds himself. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, and Thandie Newton (as the president's daughter) are also just fine (although I did find the supporting roles of a Russian businessman and his mistress to be caricatures). But the scene stealers here are Woody Harrelson (nobody can do the lunatic better), and Oliver Platt. In particular, it's impossible not to loathe Platt even as part of you secretly not only understands what he's doing but even approves just the tiniest bit.
2012 was directed and co-written by Roland Emmerich. Despite his reputation as an action film director, his history is a little uneven. 2012 fortunately puts Emmerich back on the positive side of movie-making once again where he does a credible job both writing and helming the film.
As you might expect from the trailers, the special effects are superlative. There are a couple of moments (if you blink, you'll probably miss them) where you can see the handiwork of a computer programmer, but the remaining 99.9% of the effects are utterly fantastic. To me, the only real shortcoming involves the science. And don't even get me started on the speed of the results of those suppositions! I frankly found that distracting. But only for a second!
BOTTOM LINE: 2012 is about 2 and a half hours long, and I was stunned at how quickly time passed.That might have had something to do with the fact that I spent most of my time in the theatre trying to relax all of the muscles I kept tensing as I watched the action unfold in front of me. Forget all of the other things you might consider before you decide on a movie, and tell me this: Isn't that really why you go?
POLITICAL NOTES: Do I believe that the government would keep things, even deadly serious things, a secret from its citizens? Oh, yeah. In fact, I'm pretty sure it does that kind of thing on a regular basis. And did I appreciate the nod in the film to the Communist Chinese as being pretty much the only people that could have accomplished what they did as quickly as they did? Sure, largely because it's the truth. I also found it bizarrely believable when I was confronted with the methodology the government chose to determine who would go where and when. I can't go into detail here without spoiling certain things for those who haven't yet seen the film, but suffice it to say that not all of these things are good things.
FAMILY SUITABILITY: 2012 is rated PG-13 for intense disaster sequences and some language. I'd have to agree with that rating, and add one more limitation of my own for the younger set: Remember that lengthy run time!