Movie reviews this week looks at the ecological suspense thriller
The Day After Tomorrow with Dennis Quaid (Inner Space) as a
climatologist Jack Hall, who for years has been warning the U.S.
government and the world in general that its' reliance on fossil fuels
is causing a great deal of harm to the planet (a couple of years before
Al Gore's Oscar winning An inconvenient truth).
His estimations of
a global disaster from global warming which would usher in another ice
age, which he predicts as a best guess estimate certainly not in his
lifetime; that polar melting would disrupt the North Atlantic current,
suddenly escalates to the present, with an ice age hitting the vast
majority of America, and Jack in a desperate rush against time to save
his son, Sam Hall played by Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko), who is
trapped in New York, which unfortunately is at the epicentre of this ice
age.
This is one of the first movies to highlight the environment
impact of our reliance on fossil fuels, with several scenes to ponder
the potential disaster on our hands, one of these is a helicopter going
over Scotland that suddenly just freezes at minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit
and there is a great scene, where Jack has been telling the scientific
community would happen albeit with some scoffing, that the sun would
accelerate the rapid decline in temperature to beyond freezing point,
immediately freezing structures, and anything that happens to pass
within the rays of the sun at that particular time, unfortunately he
gets to witness this phenomenon first hand in a desperate race against
time to find shelter while everything around him freezes as the sun
comes up.
There is also an unforgettable scene as the Tower of Liberty freezes solid.
Not
only does he have to breach the bitter cold, he also has to fend off
dogs that have gone insane from hunger, looking for anything warm
blooded to eat, ergo any humans they can find.
We find out that
Jack feels he has let down his son a little, and this journey to find
him is something he has to do to make up for their relationship, there
is a brilliant conversation at the beginning, where Jack finds out Sam
has failed Calculus, and Sam replies he got every question right, and
the only reason the lecturer failed him was because he didn't write out
the solutions but did it instead in his head, Jack asks him if he told
the lecturer, he told him he did, but the lecturer said if he couldn't
do it in his head neither could Sam.
Article Source:
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