From Several Days Later.

Rating: 7/10 (20 September 2008)

The millennium has seen something of a resurgence in those disaster movies that were so popular during the 1970's. And there's a logical case; special-effects have advanced in leaps and bounds during the last 30 years, whilst CGI has added a new dimension to their scale. With the possible exception of 'Towering Inferno', earlier disasters simply couldn't be addressed in a sufficiently epic way and at the same time appear believable. Check out 'Earthquake' and you get the picture.
But are the new breed actually better movies? Roland Emerich's 'The Day After Tomorrow' is about as good as the modern genre gets. There's a nice beginning with wide sweeps of polar ice viewed from a low-flying plane. The credits roll to an equally beguiling orchestral piece as seemingly endless vistas of frozen wilderness sweep past at a speed that is choreographed to the musical tempo. It's a promising start, at least.
We home-in on a group of scientists who have the astonishing misfortune to straddle the very point where this particular ice-sheet cracks. It's extremely tense, and for the most part, completely unbelievable. Quite why the ice cracks, separates a few metres, and then just stops, is left unexplained. It should have just glissaded down to the sea - shouldn't it? The team is led by Dennis Quaid. He's an unfortunate and rather unlikeable choice as a starring role, like a block of wood with a frown.
Next, we are plunged into the usual 'knowledgeable expert not taken seriously by authorities' scenario that has typified every disaster movie I can remember. Politicians should go the the cinema more often.
After that, the special-effects go into overdrive. Which is just as well because the story, the acting and the script hobble along like a group of heroes in an icy wind. There is a stupendous tornado sequence. A tidal surge engulfs Manhattan with one of the most astonishingly-well realised pieces of CGI ever presented. Brief as it is, this is without doubt the high-point of the movie. Superlatives are certainly tested. Then comes the chill. And once again it is done to perfection. Small details like multiple windows shattering in sky-scrapers and flags turning solid at their staffs are nicely observed.
There are also a few little surprises, like an abandoned Russian freighter that drifts into the downtown floods.
And that's about it. That's pretty well all one remembers: a series of colossal special-effects tableaux. The story, the actors, their acting, the script, they are so diminutive and mediocre as to be completely overwhelmed by this CGI juggernaut. Jake Gylenhall plays tacit leader to a group of prissy, preppy, privileged teenage brats. Of all people, they most deserve a grisly death. Pity Micheal Myers isn't in town. And, of course, he plays the role of hero to his particular bit of totty, for which he is suitably rewarded with a slice of sex. Some things never change for males no matter how emancipated their females become. The disposable man: that relentlessly anti-male sexism in our society; it just goes on and on (check-out the by-gender casualty lists of allied forces in Iraq, or the industrial accident fatalities in civilian employment, like - say - the building industry).
Likable Ian Holm plays the token foreign-bloke-with-brains. He's British (ah - that 'special relationship' again. Even in such domestic adversity Hollywood hasn't forgotten us. Thanks, Roland). We know Holm's British because his staff watch that curious ancient ritual called soccer. And they do it without swearing, which is something I've never heard before. When he's not being a rebellious android trying to choke Sigourney Weaver with a rolled-up magazine, Holm brings a warm human empathy to any role he plays. But typically, his is the only character I feel moved to care for; the rest are welcome to the freezer, with my compliments.
Various other B-listers make the most of their wretched lines before flood or frostbite overtakes them. An uncredited Japanese bloke gets brained by a melon-sized hailstone whilst talking to his wife on the mobile phone, and that's the Orient represented.
It's well worth watching to see those very special effects in their entirety and in sequence. If you choose to watch it more than once for the same reason, you'll need to be ready with the 'mute' and 'fast-forward' controls on the handset.
Five of my seven stars are awarded on behalf of those people we don't see in the backroom. Those we do see collect the other two.
Better than the 1970's? Well, if only the acting, and script had kept pace with the special-effects! But they haven't. If anything, with an ever-greater dependence upon backroom boys to come up with the goods, those much more needful things of story and script have, instead, been neglected. Really big movie stars like Paul Newman and Tom Cruise had (and have) a considerable input to a movie quite beyond their acting. Maybe that's why this flick doesn't have any. And maybe that's why it should have had.