Climate of fear
The Day After Tomorrow


Stars Denis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum.
Directed Roland Emmerich. Rated PG.

Reviewer: CPL Damian Shovell

From the director of such greats as Godzilla and Independence Day comes Emmerich’s latest farcical foray into unstoppable forces of nature.

Climatologist Jack Hall (Quaid) discovers global warming could trigger an abrupt change in the Earth’s climate, and predicts a change in the next 100 years or so.

His research in Antarctica shows that it happened once before, about 10,000 years ago, and he begins campaigning to warn officials of the “impending danger” – which, of course, they don’t heed, otherwise the plot would dissipate immediately.

Next minute, low and behold, dramatic changes begin to occur in the flow of the Arctic current, triggering a dramatic change in the Earth’s weather patterns.

Huge tornadoes start tearing Los Angeles apart, massive hail stones plummet into Tokyo and snow falls in New Delhi.

Within two weeks, the entire Northern Hemisphere begins to ice over and as huge cold weather vortexes form over continents, the inhabitants are snap frozen mid-stride.

As the northern states of America are evacuated and the people flee south refugee-style to Mexico, Hall embarks on a desperate quest to reach his son Sam (Gyllenhaal) who is trapped in New York.

Sam rises to the challenge and becomes a leader, also providing the love interest with the token hot chick, Laura (Rossum).

There’s nowhere near as much of the “flag-waving” that turned our stomachs in Independence Day, but the sentiments are still there with lots of lovely dramatised scenes of the Statue of Liberty poking out of the frozen ocean.

There’s a lot of rising to the occasion going on and a bit of, “Gee, haven’t we been careless with our planet,” etc., etc.