Cast: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton
Genre: Action | Drama | Sci-Fi
Release Date: November 13, 2009
Plot
NEVER before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists and governments. 2012 is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.
Review
THE issue is not so much what caused the cataclysm but how humanity will respond to the crisis. A venal presidential adviser has the task of handpicking the people who will be allowed to board the atomic-age equivalent of Noah’s ark. So the film aims to ask profound questions about how we choose the people worth saving. But profundity is not the director’s strong suit.
Stephen Farber, The Hollywood Reporter
EMMERICH’S characters may be rough sketches, but he casts them well, and having people you care about at the center of a disaster makes the special effects much more effective.
At the same time, 2012 is a light film, with very little introspection and an upbeat tone that is undiminished by the implied slaughter of about 7 billion people. For seven years following 911, we had a series of films depicting civic chaos and destruction, and these films were invariably downbeat or at least cautionary. 2012 may be Hollywood’s first post-post-911 movie.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
THE notion of playing God is implicit in the job of a film director, and rarely has the sense of a wrathful, vengeful deity at the helm been so comprehensively felt as in 2012.
On any level other than sheer visual sensation, 2012 is a joke, for the simple reason that it has no point of view; the film offers no philosophical, metaphysical, intellectual and certainly no religious perspective on the cataclysm, just the physical frenzy of it all.
