Better than most disaster movies

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2004)

spoilers
There are three groups of people who would automatically switch into high gear in the bashing of Day After Tomorrow:
1. Ultra-sensitive, paranoid Americans who take it personally
2. Those who equate CGI with the root of every evil in the film industry
3. Those expecting to emerge from a movie and become a saint
If you are none of the above, congratulations. Sit back and enjoy.
Arguably, not every movie is for entertainment. A disaster movie, however, is. It does this mainly in two ways. The first is visual and audio and that needs no elaboration. The other works on a more subliminal level but is hardly profound, simply appealing to our relished sense of security (our own) while watching other people's plight.
DAT delivers three fantastic catastrophic scenes, not to mention numerous other lesser, but still quite impressive ones. The ravaging of L.A. by numerous cyclones comes almost without warning, with such intense brutality that only CGI (very good CGI here) can recreate. The killing tidal wave that plunders Manhattan is no less devastating. Finally, with an imaginative change in taste, the eye-of-the-storm freezing-death menace is introduced first with casual reference to the ice-age mammal in the museum, then the abrupt destruction of the helicopters, and finally culminates in the cliff-hanger escapes of father and son, at two separate locations.
In addition to these sequences that relate directly to the main theme of climate-related catastrophes Emmerich spares no pain in borrowing exciting elements from elsewhere. While admittedly he does sometimes go overboard, I tend not to complain if someone bends over backwards to try to please me. Examples of such efforts are aplenty: life-line cutting from Vertical Limits, phone booth scene turning into underwater escape right out Poseidon Adventure, and pursuits by menacing wolves reminiscent of Aliens.
DAT's 'human stories' are better than most in other disaster movies. The father (Dennis Quaid) and son (Jake Gyllenhaal) line here is refreshingly uncontrived. Unlike many other exaggerated, twisted situation, what we have here is simple, straightforward and realistic, just a father whose work takes him away from the family a little too often. Simple, nevertheless moving. As a rare treat, we have the low-key three-men British climatology team facing disaster with stoicism but not without emotion. Playing the leader of the team is Ian Holm, showing the mastery of minimalising.
There is humour, but not the kind of long worn-out snappy punch lines that have been used indiscriminately in most movies. A good example is the book burning (to keep warm) scene. In a painful struggle to find books that will cause less anguish to burn, someone comes across an entire section of tax regulations.
Finally, there is a fine cast. If not brilliant, Quaid is always dependable, and particularly suited to the not extremely demanding role here. Gyllenhaal is among the finest of actors in his generation, as he well demonstrated in Moonlight Mile. Emmy Rossum, whose brief appearance in Mystic River is enough to leave quite an impression, has a very audience-pleasing role here, and please the audience she certainly does. Last but not least is Ian 'Bilbo' Holm mentioned before, who played Puck in Mid-summer Night's Dream on screen thirty-one years before Stanley Tucci did.