2012: Movie Review

Cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Thomas McCarthy, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton
Direction: Roland Emmerich
Genre: Action, Adventure

The film’s release in Mumbai, India almost coincided with the supposed arrival of cyclone Phyan in the city thus doubling the expectations we had from this film which promises to capture mankind’s race for survival. Fortunately Phyan bypassed Mumbai and Unfortunately 2012 failed to surpass our expectations.

With 2012, the maker of disaster epics Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day after tomorrow) comes up with yet another film that predicts and showcases the doomsday of mankind. Can one man save his family while the entire world is falling apart in front of him and the planet is on the verge of witnessing human extinction?

John Cusack stars as Jackson Curtis, a writer whose devotion to his failed-but-possibly-brilliant novel ends his marriage with Kate (Amanda Peet). Jackson however plays a doting dad to his children. As the earth’s plates start to shift – destroying L.A. in the process – Jackson needs to find a way out to save his family and thus begins the Jackson family’s journey for survival through ravaged land and air. Meanwhile the US government is aware of the happening and the cause of it but decides to keep mum for they can only save a selective elite citizens and not the entire human race. They have already built spaceships that can help their elite class pull through this Apocalypse.

We do expect more of those hard hitting special effects from a film of this calibre and that is what we get but the abundance of graphics somehow do not make up for the lack of a basic storyline that is a must have for a formidable concept of this stature. The film shows three hours of pure destruction but that’s that, it doesn’t lead on to anything. It also seems highly inspired by Spielberg’s ‘War of the Worlds’. A couple in an estranged relationship, their son disrespecting the father but how the disaster brings this family together… even the cracks that separate the land in two pieces and mark the beginning of the end remind you of War of the Worlds.

Even the treatment and performances seem flawed. While the world is falling apart we see huge US skyscrapers, White House, Air Fore One, 38 meters high Christ the Redeemer statue located in Rio de Janeiro crumble down to pieces (Emmerich from some strange reason refrains from showing the Statue of Liberty coming off though) but even in these circumstances the actor or his family don’t get a single scar on their body. The high octane destruction is not brutal enough to wipe out the lipstick from Peet’s lips either. Amanda Peet and John Cusack act well in bits and parts but overall they seem complacent and nonchalant even as they play hide and seek with death every second!

Emmerich showcases almost every natural disaster in this film… earthquake, Tsunami, Volcano and his lead characters travel by almost every vehicle and medium possible to salvage themselves…limo, plane, then a spaceship but their struggle remains constant and this constancy takes away from the splendid visual effects that manage to grip you and keep you on the edge of your seat in the beginning.

As monotony creeps in you sort of wait for the end of the world to arrive instead of wishing it won’t come at all. The journey of survival is too long and the wait too tiresome. 2012 is not worth the hype but can be a one time watch solely for its gripping visual effects.