2012

Cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover

Director: Roland Emmerich

Release Date: 2009

Running Time: 2hrs 31 minutes

Genre: Action

Rating: 12

Format: Sky Cinema

Synopsis:

A frustrated father struggles to keep his family alive when the world is thrust into a series of global catastrophes, forcing the planet to start over. 

December 21st, 2012 marked the ending of the 13th cycle of the Mayan long count calendar. The Mayan calendar ends December 21st 2012. The beliefs suggested that the Mayans foretold the ending of the world at this time. Also this date was highly significant to Mayans, there is no evidence to prove that the world would cease to exist. In 2009, at the Institute of Astrophysics in India, Adrian Helmsley and Dr Satnam Tsurutani discover there has been a major solar flare, one that will push the planet into severe catastrophic proportions. Forcing himself to convince the President of the United States (Glover) that the world is coming to an end, the world must start preparing themselves by building arks in Tibet that will hopefully save mankind.

Unfortunately the problem arises with the storyline when it is mentioned that only the rich will survive and board the Arks. This is a very controversial move, in saying that the President's around the world would only choose to to save the rich and not the poor. As far as the storyline goes it's not really giving off the best image to audiences. Of course the storyline is not to be taken seriously, this of course is the beauty of film. It's unfortunate really that the concept is there, it's just been very poorly executed. Although the use of humour works quite well, it does sadly pull the storyline away from the catastrophic occurrences taking place. It'd be very easy to believe that "The Day after Tomorrow" and "San Andreas" are set in the same Universe as this one due to the storyline being so similar. The storyline sadly just isn't convincing.

It's embarrassing to know that the child actors deliver better performances than some of the more professional adult actors. John Cusack stars as single father and author Jackson Curtis, Curtis must do everything he can do get his family out of the country before it's too late. Forcing his ex-wife's boyfriend to fly them to China in the hope they can board the Arks. Although Cusack delivers a fairly good performance, it's a shame the same couldn't really be said for Amanda Peet and Tom McCarthy who play Kate Curtis and Gordon Silberman. Danny Glover however, does deliver a very strong performance as the President of the United States. Risking his own life to save others, he stays behind whilst his team board Air Force One.

The special effects really dominate the film, this of course makes sense seeing as it is of course a disaster movie. The problem however is that the special effects really don't look that fantastic. When the film has got a budget worth $200,000,000, it is a little bit disappointing to see special effects that in hindsight look so poor. For the most part, it feels like two and a half hours of fancy special effects, where is the depth to the storyline? The story gets lost in endless disaster scenes that are shared with poor character development. For a film that is set in December there are no references at all to the month throughout the course of the film. The score does absolutely nothing for the film or the action sequences, there is barely any sense of suspense or fear. This film really had the potential to be excellent, a huge disappointment.

2.5/5 stars