Something's disrupted the Earth's magnetic field, so the only logical response is to strap a few nukes to a fancy train, staff it with a crack team of handsome scientists and fire it into the ground. This is a curious one, because despite such a ruthlessly stupid premise, _The Core_ does an awful lot right.

It's stacked with a surprisingly well-equipped cast, for one, with Aaron Eckhart channeling his best bottled blonde beefcake as the project lead and Hilary Swank (just a year prior to winning an Oscar) sliding into an effortless role as a fiery astronaut-turned-pilot. Character actors Bruce Greenwood and Stanley Tucci fill out the roster with equally over-achieving support roles. It's a showy, pseudo-scientific team adventure, not unlike Jules Verne's journeys a century-plus prior, and there's plenty of harmless fun to be had with that type of premise. The big set pieces are imaginative and well-realized, if completely unbelievable and convenient. The plot takes risks and makes real sacrifices, even if most of those seem misguided, happenstance, superfluous and/or preventable.

_The Core_'s biggest problem is its urge to spell everything out in a wave of absurd, hand-wavey scientific jargon that draws attention to its own fundamental shortcomings. Rather than leaving the particulars of the ship's breakneck development and construction to a mere montage, for example, it makes a point of telling us the government threw a whole lot of money at it. As if funding were the only real hurdle, the glistening key to immediate, unlimited scientific progress. It does this constantly, spelling things out where no explanation was really necessary and then flubbing all the answers. There's a feeling of insecurity behind all that, like it's apologizing for its own identity, which makes it extra-ripe for criticism. Beneath all the existential anxiety and self-loathing, tucked away in shame, is a surprisingly well-made film. Fluffy and silly, sure, but also tight and effective. In the end, though, it's a case of one step forward for every two steps back.