Movie Review: 2012 (spoilers alert!)

Movie Review: 2012

First impression: A whole piece of land with cars, houses, buildings and highways was lifted and broken apart, slowly plunging into the ocean like a ship going under. This is a disaster movie with nothing good except CG.

Why one would watch it: Roland Emmerich, Jerry Bruckheimer, Danny Glover, John Cusack. Whichever floats your boat.

What to keep an eye out for:
A lot of deaths. A whole lot of it. From massive destructions of the most awesomest kind! Which makes it real fun to watch.

Spoiler alert (please do not read further if you intend to watch the movie):

Last warning!

Consider the movie spoiled:

Out of 6 billion people, I think less than 0.1% survived the world in Roland Emmerich's 2012. That's pretty much the highest movie casualty of all time. Apart from this I think the movie did justice to the whole end-of-the-world thing.

First things first, it is the end of the world. As in the whole world, not just the United States *grins*. God knows how many times Americans try to label their land as the world by itself in almost all the disaster movies ever done.

Hence, the need to get many other nations involved in the movie to make it believable. So we have the astrophysicist scientist from India who discovered the beginning of the end of the world, China which provided the space, manpower and materials to build the Arks that are needed to save the world, Russian and Arab customers that bought their places in the Arks at ($1 billion euro per head. Is that even a number?), the French that saved valuable art pieces from the time of the Renaissance, Tibetans who talked on the peaks of mountains, two African Americans who were heroes in their own right in the movie and the Cape of Good Hope in Africa as the starting point of the regeneration of the human species. In the movie, there were English dialogues, Chinese, French, Indian and even Tibetan.

I loved it.

The casting is also quite impressive.

Danny Glover (of Lethal weapon 1 to 4, Mel Gibson's partner in crime) as the U.S. President, Chiwetel Ejiofor (of American Gangsters) as a brilliant young scientist who highlighted the problem to the US govt, John Cusack (no intro needed), a writer of a book which served as a red herring, with Amanda Peet (who looks a lot like Linda Hamilton) as a divorced couple on the run with their two children, Oliver Platt (of Lake Placid) who did a great job at being the biggest jackass of all time, Thandie Newton (of Mission Impossible) as the President's daughter, Woody Harrelson who did a stunning job as Charlie Gone-Loco, the conspiracy-theory DJ, Patrick Bauchau (of The Pretender fame) as the director of the Louvre museum, Chin Han (of Dark Knight Hong Kong triad lord Lau) who is a chinese national and welder who worked on the Arks, and Jimi Mistry (of EastEnders fame) as the brilliant Indian scientist who started this all back in 2009... in the film.

Casting aside, the movie does great in the computer graphics department, having destroyed Yellowstone, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the White House, St Peter's Basilica and the Sistine chapel, Hawaii and not to mention having relocated the South Pole.

As for the annihilation sector, to sum it up, I think the director told the graphic artists to 'keep no prisoners'.

There were instances in the movie where you and your humanity are tested. Tears will fall, numerous times throughout the two and a half hours. There were a couple of areas where a quick run at humour is greatly appreciated by the audience. But ultimately, it is the clinging of Hope that the storyline presented to the audience that truly captivated me. Heroism is also well-portrayed throughout the movie, almost as much as selfishness is. And I should not forget, the lingering question in everyone's mind, "If this is truly the end of the world, what would you have done towards the end?"

After the movie:

At the end of it, the movie leaves one thinking, if 2012 is really the end of the world as we know it, will we have acted like the people in this stunning movie? Would we have acted worse, or would we have done one better than they? I sincerely hope that we will never find out.

But you have GOT to watch the movie. It's a blast!