In between her two Oscar winning roles in Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby, Hilary Swank got to save the Earth in The Core. The film is a big budget maximum special effects science fiction disaster thriller which was so common in the Seventies. The only thing it lacked was a bunch old time movie names being put in harm's way of the disaster. Of course between then and now those who might have rated guest star roles have either gone to the great beyond or are in nursing homes.

I don't understand the trashing this film has gotten in certain quarters. Hilary Swank is always good even if the films she appears aren't always of the quality of her two Oscar winners. She gets to work with hunky Aaron Eckhardt in saving the planet whose magma core has stopped its own rotation, causing all kinds of strange disasters all over the globe.

Swank is the pilot, Eckhardt a scientist and Delroy Lindo the designer of a prototype machine for exploring the inner reaches of the earth and the high temperatures it has. It's getting pressed into service fast so that Swank and the group can deposit nuclear bombs in strategic places and set them off. That's the plan, but there's a lot going both within her crew and up top at the command center where people have some conflicting agendas.

I liked the special effect very much and the film keeps the tension going throughout. On the top the efforts of DJ Qualls should be noted as he keeps something nasty from happening with some creative work that his hacker character is capable of.

The Core is a very well made science fiction thriller with the attention on the action and at a tense pace that never lets up until the very end. I wouldn't miss it.

THE CORE is a '50s B-movie writ large. It may not be a brilliant film, but it successfully taps the 'anything goes' mentality of a schlocky black-and-white sci fi epic and updates the formula to modern times. In essence the movie itself is about a crew drilling down into the core of the earth; if you're looking for more depth (hah) than that, then look elsewhere. However, the decision was then made to add some familiar 'disaster' scenes to the mix, thus increasing the running time to over two hours in the process and making this movie way too long. With half an hour cut out, the tension and story would have been tighter and it wouldn't have that bloated Hollywood blockbuster feel to it.

Of course, the 1959 epic JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH with James Mason is THE drilling-into-the-Earth movie and THE CORE doesn't come close. Ironically, the special effects are worse than in that film; despite replacing tacky dinosaurs with CGI effects of molten rock and running lava, all of the 'outside' scenes of the craft heading underground are poor-looking in the extreme. However, I did like the 'global disaster' set pieces which are thrown in to keep the film exciting. Highlights include: falling pigeons in Trafalgar Square; super-storms in Rome; people dropping down dead in a US city and my favourite moment, when a hole in the Earth's atmosphere sends down a heat ray that melts the Golden Gate bridge – a wonderful and surprisingly sadistic moment.

Speaking of sadism, THE CORE sets about offing crew members with relish, imaginatively inventing the most horrific deaths in existence for these poor saps. One guy is slowly crushed to death; another is blown to pieces; a third literally melts in the lava and a fourth burns alive. It would be pretty disturbing, had the film more realism. I didn't mind the script, which has some authentic-sounding dialogue in places, and you can't fault a movie that name-checks one of my favourite magazines. There's also some good humour, like the 'yes, yes, and the core is made of cheese!' quip that Stanley Tucci's scientist character utters. There's not as much annoying flag-waving as in Armageddon, although the pay-off (using a bomb to save the world) is virtually the same.

The casting ain't bad either. Aaron Eckhart (THE DARK NIGHT) excels as the rugged lead; Hilary Swank is the tough-cookie pilot forced to make some drastic decisions. I didn't care for Stanley Tucci's acting, but I did appreciate the presence of Tcheky Karyo (KISS OF THE DRAGON) in a good-guy role for once – in fact, he's my favourite character in the film.

The core of the earth has stopped spinning, and its protective magnetic field is disappearing. The world starts to suffer from unusual disasters. The only people that could stop it is a disparate group of individuals who must travel to the center of the earth and set off some nuclear warheads.

It's a good excuse to blow up all the world's best places. The science is passable as these doomsday scenario goes. It's not the worst sci-fi idea. This has some fun moments. They had fun blowing stuff up. The story moves along nicely. It's fun even with DJ Qualls 'hacking' the earth. The CG is top notch. There isn't anything wrong with that part. It's a big budget treatment of a sci-fi B-movie concept.