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It is relieving to watch the screen at the end of a Roland Emmerich movie, whose music is so potent, almost as if giving a cautious optimism. Countless people might have died, but at least the core actors are alive. Los Angeles was destroyed by UFOs in “Independence Day” by Emmerich. He “Godzilla’d” New York City, and now, in “The Day After Tomorrow” Emmerich surpasses himself Los Angeles gets ravaged by a plethora of tornados, New York gets buried under ice and snow, United Kingdom gets flash-frozen, and much of the Northern Hemisphere is obliterated for good measure. Thank god that Jack, Sam, Laura, Jason and Dr. Lucy Hall, along with Dr. Hall’s little cancer survivor, make it out.
Indeed, it is true, the movie is downright ridiculous. What left me stunned is that it is also pretty frightening. The special effects are of such awesome scale that the movie works despite its cornball plotting. When Los Angeles gets ripped apart by tornadoes (and the Hollywood sign is absolutely scorched), when a wall of water storms into New York, when a Russian tanker floats down the street in Manhattan, when skyscrapers get buried under snow, when the crew of a space station can see nothing but severe storm systems well, it is hard not to pay attention.
There is no doubt that some readers will be irate with me for stating that Jack, Sam, Laura, Jason, Lucy Hall with Dr. Jason and that little cancer patient survives. Have I spoiled the plot? They spoil themselves. When a cataclysmic catastrophe tears apart a multitude of lives, and the movie chooses to focus on a handful of people, it is a given that they will live, although some supporting actors might need to perish. What is funny in movies like “The Day After Tomorrow” is that these screenplays implodes subcontinents and flip whether or not Sam should confess his love for Laura.
The film features Dennis Quaid as Jack Hall, a paleoclimatologist whose computer simulations predict that the world’s climate changing will result in an ice age. He gives a speech at a conference in New India but is openly mocked by the American vice president, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Dick Chenery (Kenneth Welsh). “Our economy is as fragile as the environment,” the vice president states while rolling his eyes at Jack’s “absurd claims”.
However, not too long after that, India is showered with hailstones, while snowfall begins to occur and trees start getting decimated in Tokyo. As always, birds are moving south and out of harms way. Airplanes are being thrust into the sky and torn to bits by turbulence. The president (Perry King) finds out that the FAA wants to cancel all flights and asks the vice president, “What do you think we should do?”.
At the same time, young Sam Hall (Jake Gyllenhaal) travels to New York with an academic decathlon team which consists of Brian (Arjay Smith) and Laura (Emmy Rossum of “Mystic River“). They are all stuck where they. Jack manages to get his point through to the administration and gets a friend who works in the White House to help. “This time,” he claims, “it will be different, you have to speak with the president directly.”
He cautions that anyone who comes in contact with super-cooled air will die and instructs everyone else to stay indoors. Afterwards, he starts walking from Washington to New York to meet his son. Two of his friends, who have decades of experience crossing Arctic regions, decide to join him as well.
We are asking ourselves these questions (a) why to go for long walks to New York when he has crucial skills that could save millions of people? (b) assuming he makes this journey, won’t his son be dead or alive regardless? (c) how fast can you trek from Washington to New York while walking on a heavy layer of ice and in a blizzard? This movie seems to operate under the premise that you can cover that distance in two nights and under most of three days. Oh, I forgot, part of the distance is driven, even though the highways are covered in snow and gridlocked except for parts where they happen to be driving. There is no further explanation of how they manage to get gas.
As regarding the answer to (a), anyone cognizant of the formula will note that it is because he Feels Guilty About Neglecting His Son by loitering too much as a paleoclimatologist. Spelling it consumed a lot of his time. So, sure, the peripheral human plots are ridiculous all except for the muted moments and some graceful Ian Holm’s performance as a nondescript, sorrowful but wise Scottish meteorologist. Just like Peter O’Toole in “Troy”, Holm shows that a trained British actor of great talent can step into quite literally any moment and create the illusion that it possesses some significance.
Along with the few survivors left in New York, Gyllenhaal and Quaid relentlessly try to keep up with the ridiculous dialogue that is taking place. Meanwhile, Jack’s wife and Sam’s mother, also a doctor named Lucy Hall (Sela Ward), valiantly struggles with her subplot surrounding the little boy suffering from cancer named Peter. Well, she sort of does; Peter’s fighting his own battle too. We see her after the hospital is evacuated, trying to get an ambulance while demanding one and I think we can all agree is a little overzealous considering Manhattan is currently frozen over with snow, flooding a few floors below the eighth. But did the ambulance actually come? Here’s another for you – remember those wolves that escaped the zoo? Think we’ll see them again?
When it comes to the science in this film, I have no opinion. There’s no doubt about the existence of global warming, and I do feel sad about the Bush administration’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty. I find it hard to accept the assumption that climactic catastrophe, if it happens, happens like this. The most interesting point in the movie for me was when it shows how America becomes aggressively aggressive illegal immigrants in Mexico or when the vice president makes international speeches through the Weather Channel. Yes, “The Day After Tomorrow” is absurd – but exquisitely absurd and the special effects are unbelievably great.
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