Unimaginative and unintelligent, 'The Core' is slightly worse than your run of the mill American save-the-world-from-disaster-using-nukes movie. Basically the core has stopped turning because a scientist guy did a thing, so the main character takes five minutes to badly explain it before shooting off in a wormy thing that can somehow withstand the pressure and heat (as well as drilling at presumably hundreds of miles an hour) with a rag-tag crew, all of whom die save him and the attractive woman that was the Vulcan in 'Star Trek: Enterprise'. Oh wait, no it's Hillary Swank. Damn. Yeah, OK, this movie's shit.
That's about it. There's no subtlety, the effects are bad, the acting is terrible for the most part and nearly OK now and then. Everything is stupidly overdone, and of course the US saves the world without any input from any other nation. I'm astounded that popular reviewers gave this such a high score. IMDB gave it 5.4/10, even Rotten Tomatoes (who I sometimes listen to) gave it 41%.
At one point they even get out of their metal dustbin, and are somehow protected against the crushing pressure and intense heat by their bronze latex jumpsuits. I know I'm past the complaining about the science bit but I just remembered that and it annoyed me, and it wouldn't really fit in up there very well now. If they had to have suits at least make then great big hulk-busting bastards, and maybe while your at it set the movie a thousand years in the future when we might have this stuff.
I was honestly expecting there to be dinosaurs or some kind of alien life in the core, and for the second half of the movie to turn into a 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' remake (though even this garbage would beat the mound of faeces that was shat out in 2008). I didn't check, but that sounded like Linkin Park during the credits, though surely in 2003 they were too cool for this. (OK I just checked, and it wasn't Linkin Park - and don't call me Shirley).
The Core: 7.8