# The Core

The Core is a 2003 disaster movie in which the Earth's core has stopped rotating. Within a year, the Earth will lose its electromagnetic shield and be fried by solar radiation. It's up to a small team of scientists to travel down to the core and restart it.
    Directed by Jon Amiel. Written by Cooper Layne and John Rogers.

## Dialogue

    Col. Robert Iverson: Being a leader isn't about ability. It's about responsibility.
    Maj. Rebecca Childs: Got it, sir.
    Col. Robert Iverson: No you don't, Beck. I mean, you're not just responsible for the good ones. You've got to be responsible for the bad ones. You've got to be ready to make the shitty call.
    Maj. Rebecca Childs: What makes you think I'm not?
    Col. Robert Iverson: Because you're so damn good. You haven't hit anything you couldn't beat. I mean, hell, you were the one who figured out how to save the space shuttle. You made me, you made the rest of NASA just look like an ass. It's just you're used to winning... and you're not really a leader until you've lost.
    Col. Robert Iverson: People. Doctors Zimsky and Keyes? You guys are our resident geophysicists, so what do you make of this?
    Dr. Conrad Zimsky: The mantle is a chemical hodgepodge of, a, variety of elements...
    Dr. Ed 'Braz' Brazzelton: Say it with me: "I don't know."
    Serge Leveque: Excuse me Dr. Brazzelton, when do you think the ship will be operational?
    Dr. Ed 'Braz' Brazzelton: When I get my fabrication methods perfected, twelve... ten years. Ten years.
    General Thomas Percell: What would it take to get it done in three months?
    Dr. Ed 'Braz' Brazzelton: Fifty billion dollars, I...
    [laughing]
    General Thomas Percell: [deadpan] Will you take a cheque?
    Dr. Josh Keyes: You should use a credit card. You get miles.
    General Thomas Percell: Hmm.
    Zimsky: M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction. A perfect acronym if ever there was one.
    Josh: Beautiful.
    Beck: Hey guys, we're closing in on the inner core.
    Josh: The nukes are ready. The timers are on.
    Beck: Great. Let's start dropping them.
    Zimsky: No. The bombs are not built for these pressures. That's why they were in that pod. If you send them out now, out of that casing, they'll be crushed instantly.
    Beck: And I assume we have a plan D.
    Josh: Plan D is Virgil's compartiments. We put a nuke in each section of Virgil and then eject the individual sections. They should stay intact long enough for the nuke to go off. [Braz sighs]
    Josh: What?
    Braz: The Virgil is not designed to eject undamaged compartments. [Shows them an animation] Okay, these are the ejection mechanisms holding each compartment in place. They're all connected by one master hydraulic gear, kind of like keys on a keyring. What we have to do, we have to unlock the piston. That will release the compartments so the bombs can be jettisoned.
    Zimsky: Where's the master gear?
    Braz: In the crawl space we used to get out earlier.
    Zimsky: [Frustrated] Well, what the hell is it doing there?
    Braz: Look, I had this ship built in three damn months; I didn't think I'd deliberately be sabotaging her, I'm sorry!
    Josh: So one of us has to go in there.
    Braz: Correct.
    Beck: Into the crawl space, that has core fluid at over 9000 degrees?
    Braz: Yes.
    Josh: Can you flush it with liquid nitrogen?
    Braz: We don't have enough of it at this point.
    Zimsky: 9000 degrees. And our suits are built to withstand...?
    Braz: Half that, probably.
    Zimsky: Right, half that.
    Josh: So what you're saying is, whoever goes into that crawl space, is not coming back.
    Beck: You know what makes me really, really angry? Bob, Serge, Braz, Zimsky. No one's every going to know what they did or why they died.
    Josh: Unless, it all got out somehow.
    Beck: That's unthinkable.
    [they smile]
    [last lines]
    Taz 'Rat' Finch(Releasing the "Unsung Heroes" program on the Internet): Destiny, meet world. World, meet Destiny.

## Taglines

* Earth has a deadline
* In a year, everyone on Earth is dead.
* The only way out... is in.
* Say it with me: "I don't know."

## Cast

* Aaron Eckhart — Josh
* Hilary Swank — Beck
* Delroy Lindo — Brazzelton
* Stanley Tucci — Zimsky
* D. J. Qualls — Rat
* Richard Jenkins — General Purcell
* Tcheky Karyo — Serge
* Bruce Greenwood — Commander Robert Iverson
* Alfre Woodard — Stickley

## External links

* The Core quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* The Core at Rotten Tomatoes