Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
You know him. You love him. And normally, when he gets up a head of steam, there’s no stopping him. But this time, it sounds like THE CORE wasn’t bad enough to really get him going. I’ll let him explain his reaction:
SPOILER WARNING!!!
So after months of ridicule, THE CORE has finally opened. After months of hearing how laugh out loud bad it was I was finally going to get to see THE CORE for myself. I went into THE CORE expecting a great big gooey blob of magmatic cheese only to walk out feeling like I just ingested the contents of blender that mixed Jules Verne, Irwin Allen, and Michael Bay together into one altogether unsatisfying concoction. Man, what a letdown.
Don’t get me wrong. There are moments in THE CORE that are entertaining just on sheer audacity alone. Unfortunately, the closer mankind’s saviors get to the Earth’s core the more momentum the movie loses. Much has been said about the movie’s scientific accuracy but the problem with THE CORE isn’t the science but the cliches. Outside of the film’s outlandish premise and a handful of ludicrous moments, THE CORE is just another disaster film.
Truth be told the premise of THE CORE isn’t even the silliest one I’ve seen. TBS made one a year or two ago called ON HOSTILE GROUND about giant sinkholes threatening to destroy New Orleans. I lambasted that one myself awhile back in my regular NOWFF column. The more absurd the premise the better, I say. Unfortunately, as THE CORE proves, Hollywood is starting to run out of disaster movie ideas. They’ve pretty much used up everything by now. Next year Roland Emmerich is going to give us THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, which from what those that have already read the script say sounds like it could make THE CORE look like THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. Two category 5 hurricanes collide and merge to form a super category 10 hurricane? Nice to see that Mr. Emmerich doesn’t let things like scientific plausibility or common sense stop him from making such glorious crap! You know, I don’t think we’ve had a disaster movie about whirlpools yet though or hail the size of SUVs or Earth’s gravity failing causing everything to start floating up into space. Hey, I got one for all you budding screenwriters out there. You ever heard those weird stories about it raining fish or frogs? What if it was raining frogs but the frogs were actually South American Poison Dart Frogs and one touch will kill anyone that comes in contact with them. Now I’d pay to see that movie.
Getting back on topic, you know why most stories set in inner earth usually feature dinosaurs, Morlocks, ancient civilizations, Inhumanoids, or other weird lifeforms? Because otherwise there’s nothing but dirt, rock, crystal, magma, and an assortment of fluids! Scientifically accurate inner Earth isn’t especially cinematic. THE CORE is like having the Starship Enterprise traveling through space but never encountering anything other than meteors, asteroids, comets, and interstellar gases. Now that can still make for a good movie but if you don’t care about the characters and you’re not enthralled by the plot then it all becomes incredibly tedious.
Now being an aficionado of schlock, I can safely say I’ve seen a ton of cheesy disaster movies. Hell, the 70s alone turned out a lifetime supply of them. For better or for worse, I can spot the cliches and, in most cases, accurately predict who will live and who will die almost as soon as the character is introduced. Before we delve into THE CORE, let’s break it down character wise with a quick look at the 6 primary characters who will be putting their lives on the line to save the world.
1) Josh Keyes played by Aaron Eckhart – I swear to God if the Oscars introduce a new category next year for Best Bill Pullman Impersonation then Eckhart is a lock. Just watching him in this movie it is uncanny how much he looks and acts just like Bill Pullman would if he was playing the part. If I didn’t know any better I’d say Aaron Eckhart was Bill Pullman’s younger, hunkier brother.
CHARACTER SURVIVAL PROBABILITY RATING – 85%. He’s the hero. He’s the leading man. This all but guarantees he will survive unless he make a noble sacrifice at the end such as Bruce Willis did in ARMAGEDDON or Gene Hackman did in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.
2) Major Rebecca Childs played by Hilary Swank – With this movie Hilary Swank officially begins that same sort of career nosedive that many young actresses take after winning an Oscar for their breakthrough role. This is really a role that could have been played by just about any actress and there is nothing distinctive about her part and Swank really doesn’t add anything to it. To be honest, her character is more a prop than an actual character. Somewhere out there, I suspect Annette Bening is either laughing hysterically or ripping her hair out depending on how bitter she is for not getting the Oscar.
CHARACTER SURVIVAL PROBABILITY RATING – 95%. I would score this 100% but Tea Leoni’s idiotic suicide in DEEP IMPACT is the only case of the female lead in a disaster movie dying that I can think of.
3) Sergei played by Tcheky Karyo – Another rather thankless role. Karyo speaks with an accent and provides the cast with its token foreigner so as not to seem completely Ameri-centric.
CHARACTER SURVIVAL PROBABILITY RATING – 0%. Oh, please! He’s the leading man’s best friend and all he talks about is how he’s doing this to save his daughters. You might as well just put a bullet in his head before the mission starts because there is no chance in hell this guy is going to live to see the closing credits.
4) Dr. Conrad Zimsky played by Stanley Tucci – Tucci actually manages to overact even when he speaks in a low-key voice or is saying nothing at all. It is nothing short of astonishing to watch this man work. And then towards the end when he gets a chance to really ham it up…forget about all this CGI crap, that is the greatest special effect of the film. Zimsky is also the only character in the movie that is actually three-dimensional.
CHARACTER SURVIVAL PROBABILITY RATING – 5%. He’s a pompous ass, an antagonist, and is even in part responsible for what is really going on. Characters like this in disaster films usually die in one of four ways: a noble death to redeem themselves, they unintentionally cause their own death, suicide after realizing what they’ve done, or are killed by one of the leads. The only chance a character like this has to survive is if the hero captures him to await punishment after the main threat is dealt with.
5) Dr. Brazelton played by Delroy Lindo – The sad thing about Delroy Lindo is that he is a good actor who constantly chooses high-profile roles that give him virtually nothing to do. Other than to collect an easy paycheck, can anyone explain what the hell he was doing in GONE IN 60 SECONDS, THE ONE, or ROMEO MUST DIE? Granted this one gives him a bit more to do than those did but just like those other films the role he plays here only goes to show that he’s really Samuel L. Jackson minus the volcanic charisma.
CHARACTER SURVIVAL PROBABILITY RATING – 50%. His character is a little harder to classify because the kind of character Lindo plays in this disaster movie varies from film to film. He’s sort of like the Roddy McDowell character in POSEIDON ADVENTURE or Richard Chamberlin in THE SWARM or George Kennedy in (Insert 70s Disaster Movie Title Here Since He Appeared In Almost All Of Them).
6) Col. Bob Iverson played by Bruce Greenwood – No matter how bad the script might be you can always depend on an actor like Bruce Greenwood to bring a touch of class to the role. That said, he really has nothing to do here other than look and speak as if every waking second is a dire moment.
CHARACTER SURVIVAL PROBABILITY RATING – 25%. This is another character that is hard to classify because it varies from movie to movie. More often than not they don’t make it to the end. The fact that Greenwood’s character is so grim should easily tip everyone off that he’s going to be the first to go in this film.
Now before I begin, let me just say right now that if you don’t want to read a long, in-depth analysis/critique/dissection/MST3King of this movie, well, then why the hell did you click on a link to something I wrote? You really should know better by now. That said, in the interest of time, I have decided that unlike other reviewers, I will try as hard as possible not to get bogged down with the scientific details of the movie that have been of such great debate and ridicule. Also, since there are so many scenes that feature insignificant chitchat and scientific explanations, I’ve decided to just insert BLAH BLAH BLAH whenever that occurs. That alone will save considerable time.
THE CORE opens with a scene in which 30+ individuals within a several block radius suddenly drop dead for seemingly no reason. We’re then introduced to Josh Keyes as he is teaching his geology class about rocks and sound waves. How ironic? Ominous-looking federal agents pull him out of class and transport him to some facility where all the dead bodies are. Here he is reunited with his old pal Sergei, a fellow geologist, and they are asked for their expert opinions on how these people died and if it was some sort of sonic weapon. Turns out they all had pacemakers and some sort of high frequency sound wave interfered with the devices causing them to drop dead. They are rudely dismissed by the anal retentive dick of a military general, the kind that always shows up in a movie like this, after they surmise that there is no known sonic weapon of this magnitude that exists.
We’re off then to Britain, Trafalgar Square, I do believe, where the pigeons suddenly go haywire and die causing their airborne corpses to crash into everything like kamikazes. This is actually my favorite scene in the movie because it plays out in much the way I imagine THE BIRDS would have if Alfred Hitchcock had been high on crystal meth when he made it.
Back in his lab, Jason watches the news report on the birds, does some web surfing about other recent strange bird phenomena, and, much like Jeff Goldblum in ID4, comes to realize exactly what is going on in only a matter of seconds and proceeds to gather the evidence needed to convince people in charge that his hypothesis is right.
Meanwhile, the Space Shuttle, piloted by Col. Bob Iverson and Major Rebecca Childs, is coming in for a landing when they suddenly find themselves off course by about 100,000 miles or so due to some sort of static interference. Because crashing into the ocean or landing in the desert wouldn’t be very exciting they’re heading straight for downtown Los Angeles. Iverson is understandably perturbed by this turn of events but “Beck,” that’s her nickname, reacts to this situation so non-chalantly you’d think she’d done this before as she quickly and easily formulates a new landing plan in a matter of seconds.
Another character is introduced in the form of the NASA Flight Director played by Alfre Woodard. I didn’t catch her character’s name so I’ll just refer to her as Alfre Woodard. Its not as if she’s actually given anything to do in this movie other than to stare concerned at monitors and speak with authority. She also seems to have a heavy Southern accent. What? Billy Bob Thornton wasn’t available to reprise his role from ARMAGEDDON?
So after buzzing a baseball stadium, they crash land the shuttle in one of those huge drainage canals that are always used for chase scenes in action movies set in LA. The only thing missing from this scene was having two guys carrying a huge plane of glass for the shuttle to crash through. Well, at least they managed to include the construction worker listening to really loud music who is startled when he turns around and sees the nose of the space shuttle just inches away from him.
Josh confronts the famous Dr. Conrad Zimsky outside of a museum and begs him to look at his evidence about “the end of the world.” We know from the outset that Zimsky is a total dick because he’s bald, smokes, speaks with a very aristocratic voice, and, most importantly, Stanley Tucci plays him and Stanley Tucci rarely doesn’t play pricks. Zimsky reviews the evidence but has a hard time believing it. However, he still calls up some high ranking military type and mutters something about “destiny catching back up with them.”
Back in Washington, Beck is concerned about the board of inquiry blaming the crew for the shuttle crash. BLAH BLAH BLAH Everyone runs outside to see the pretty lights that just magically appeared in the sky.
Josh gives his presentation to military types and other higher ups. He tells them about how the spinning of the earth’s core operates and keeps us protected from solar radiation using a piece of fruit. He even demonstrates what is going to happen to the earth a year from now by flamethrowing another piece of fruit. Personally, I’d like to think that if someone ever discovered that such a doomsday scenario was going to occur they could accurately explain it without having to perform a Bill Nye The Science Guy skit. Anyway, he tells them that for some reason the earth’s core has stopped spinning, there’s no way of restarting it, and we’re all going to be dead in a year. One of the general’s declares this whole scenario to be the single stupidest thing he’s ever heard in his life and suddenly John Rogers, THE CORE’s screenwriter, runs onto the soundstage and begins yelling at everyone for being ignorant, undersexed fanboys until security drags him away kicking and screaming.
Okay, since the next half hour of the movie is the most yawn inducing I’m going to just summarize it quickly. DJ Qualls is a total goober who plays a total goober of a computer hacker named Rat (Perhaps because he’s such a rat-faced dweeb?) who is brought in to hack the entire internet to make sure nobody else out there can put together the same kind of hypothesis that Josh came up with. Zimsky takes them to the desert to meet his estranged ex-partner, Dr. Brazelton, who has been developing a laser ray that can disintegrate rock as well as a ship designed for intro-planetary exploration. BLAH BLAH BLAH They need to get everything operational within 3 months because that’s when things are going to start getting really bad. BLAH BLAH BLAH Iverson and Beck are going to pilot the ship. BLAH BLAH BLAH They’re going to detonate nukes to get the core to start spinning because as anyone who watches enough movies already knows there isn’t any problem than can’t be solved with nuclear weapons. BLAH BLAH BLAH Iverson gives Beck, who is having trouble learning how to pilot the pod, a speech on how leadership is really about having to make hard choices thus guaranteeing that he will most likely be the first one to die. BLAH BLAH BLAH
Just as they’re almost ready, a massive electromagnetic storm devastates Rome. The Roman Colosseum explodes. I already saw this scene in MEGIDDO and liked it much better then because at least that scene was preceded by Michael York challenging God by screaming, “Bring it on!”
Okay, so our crew of six head out to the Marianas Trench where they climb into Mechagodzilla’s vibrator and launch themselves into the planet. Dr. Brazelton, being a huge fan of 80s WWF wrestler “The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase dubs the vessel Virgil after the wrestler’s bodyguard. Or did he name it after someone from mythology? I forget. I wasn’t paying attention when he said it.
Oh, Alfre Woodard is back as the mission commander but her Southern accent wasn’t able to join her. Also, they have Rat doing all his computer hacking from some computers just off to the side in the same room as mission control because God forbid DJ Qualls get deprived of even a second of screen time.
Virgil is launched. BLAH BLAH BLAH Something about the ship “singing” to some nearby whales that went completely over my head. Cue an underwater earthquake and then they activate the laser and penetrate the Earth’s crust. For the next few minutes we get plenty of BLAH BLAH BLAH and a glowing, computer generated, tube plowing through computer generated solid rock.
They didn’t count on there actually being some hollow parts and since Virgil wasn’t designed to fly they end up crash landing inside the Fortress of Solitude with one of these giant crystals pressed up against the nose of the ship. They decide they’re going to have to get out and push so they don their snazzy innerspace suits and exit the ship. I know the suits are supposed to protect them from extreme heat but there’s no explanation as to why the pressure doesn’t cause them to implode the very second they step out of the ship. Wait, I said I wasn’t going to question the science.
I’m not entirely sure what happened next because I had to make a bathroom run. When I returned, Josh had passed out, Brazelton broke this giant crystal by just kicking it a few times, and they were now being threatened by a magma flow that was clearly added for no reason other than to desperately try to add some suspense. A rock falls fatally striking Iverson causing him to take the Nestea death plunge into the magma. Everyone runs back into the ship and they get the hell out of there. They continue boring deep into the planet with a heavy emphasis on “boring.”
Josh wakes up and is hailed a hero. I never considered fainting to be an act of bravery so I’m just going to assume I missed something while I was in the bathroom. BLAH BLAH BLAH So basically everyone takes a sec to mourn the loss of Iverson before continuing on the way.
Sergei, Brazelton, and Josh are in the back tending to the detonators while Beck drives Virgil through a rough patch of what turns out to be giant diamonds. Did you see TITAN AE? Remember the scene with the gigantic space crystals? Guess what? This is pretty much the same exact scene! Just as Beck thinks she’s successfully navigated her way through this field the last diamond punctures the hull of the last compartment of the ship. In case I neglected to mention it, Gigantor’s dildo is segmented into several compartments that can be detached for no logistical reason except the screenwriters had already planned out the big finale and this concept was going to come into play.
The trio flees the final compartment with the detonators as the emergency door shuts behind them. But wait, they forgot one so Sergei goes back and is able to hand off the detonator to Josh before the door closes completely trapping him inside. Noble sacrifice #1 coming up. While Brazelton tries to bypass the door locks Josh gets on the horn to Beck and begs her to override the manual ejection, which is set to detach damaged sections of the ship. Zimsky advises her not to do so since one damaged segment can destroy the entire vessel. Beck doesn’t oblige and the Frenchman is smooshed to death as the compartment is detached and implodes. Josh comes up front, waves a picture of Sergei’s three daughters in Beck’s face, and begins sobbing uncontrollably like a woman who has just been browbeaten by Dr. Phil. She sternly replies by telling him how she had to make a “hard decision.” And you thought that whole speech Iverson gave her was just filler material?
After everyone regains they’re composure, more BLAH BLAH BLAH ensues until Zimsky runs another computer simulation proving that their calculations were wrong and the nukes won’t be able to restart the core. While everyone reacts with shock, Zimsky states that they might as well turn around and go home and let “destiny” take care of it. They ask just what the hell “destiny” is and Zimsky tells them all about “Plan B” involving D.E.S.T.I.N.I., which is an acronym for Dubious Element Screenwriter Tossed In Needlessly Idiotic. You see, other governments not friendly to America have developed weapons that can trigger earthquakes so continuing our great nation’s tradition of mutually assured destruction we built one that’s bigger, badder, and better than everyone else’s with help from none other than Mr. USA, Dr. Conrad Zimsky. Josh is outraged and begins rambling about how this weapon is probably what is responsible for damaging the core and firing it again would most likely speed up the world’s destruction.
At this point, everyone above and below ground begin arguing amongst themselves about how to proceed with Zimsky and industrial war machine types wanting to use Plan B while Josh, Brazelton, and Beck want to continue towards the center of the Earth while they attempt to devise a “Plan C.” Zimsky is overruled 3-to-1 by the crew of the Virgil meaning they will press on and suddenly Stanley Tucci goes into overacting overdrive the likes of which is rarely seen by human eyes. You just…you just have to experience this scene for yourself. Zimsky just begins frothing at the mouth about how they’re all going to die needlessly and he isn’t suicidal like they are and that Project D.E.S.T.I.N.I. is the only viable alternative and… Well, he goes on like this a little while more until Brazelton knocks him out cold with a punch to the face. Everyone should go see THE CORE just for this one brief scene of Stanley Tucci overacting out the wahzoos!
Since the action has been rather slow, the filmmakers decide now would be a good time to destroy another major metropolitan city. This time San Francisco gets roasted when unfiltered solar rays find a hole in the atmosphere and proceed to incinerate everything in it’s path. If you saw the bridge collapse finale of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES then just super-size it with the Golden Gate Bridge and you get the idea.
Seeing San Fran on fire leads that dickish general at mission control to declare that they can’t wait any longer and gives the order to fire up D.E.S.T.I.N.I. which will mean certain death for our heroes in the cybercigar. DJ Qualls ain’t havin’ none of that so he begins using his computer station to desperately try and find some way to prevent D.E.S.T.I.N.I. from firing. Meanwhile, Steven Seagal is trying save his niece from terrorists that have taken over the train he’s on and are threatening to wipe out Washington with… Whoops! Wrong movie about earthquake-inducing superweapons! As D.E.S.T.I.N.I., which looks like some sort of gigantic, futuristic version of the shake machine at Dairy Queen, powers up and prepares to fire, Rat successfully hacks into uber-secret military databases and diverts power from the earthquake weapon’s facility in Alaska thus rendering it useless. Exactly how Rat was able to locate this top secret internet stuff about D.E.S.T.I.N.I. by searching through files using the word D-E-S-T-I-N-Y is a mystery only John Rogers could explain. And since we haven’t had a noble sacrifice in awhile, it’s time for #2.
Brazelton and Josh desperately try to come up with a new plan but keep coming up short until Zimsky wakes up and decides if you can’t beat them join them. The three come up with some cockamamie scheme about separating the various segments of Virgil, each containing a nuke, around the core at strategic locations. BLAH BLAH BLAH The ship wasn’t designed to detach segments manually so they have to turn some lever that just happens to be located in a superheated crawlspace ensuring certain death to whomever goes in. Brazelton declares that it is his ship and he’s going to give his life for it. Not surprisingly, nobody makes an effort to talk him out of it. So he suits up, ventures into the crawlspace where his suit slowly begins to melt away, and manages to flip the switch before departing this world. If the temperature is 4,000 degrees more than what the suits are designed to handle shouldn’t he have pretty much melted instantaneously? Wait, I’m not questioning the science. I forgot again.
Now if you like bright colors then you’re going to love this portion of THE CORE! We’ve got bright yellow, bright orange, bright red, bright orange-red, and the ever-popular blinding bright white! Yes, there’s a couple scenes towards the end that are so bright you’re going to feel like someone’s shining a flashlight directly into your pupils!
So we’re finally at the center of the Earth. Josh and Zimsky prep the nukes and detach the ship segments. Since it all seems too easy something has to go wrong. First, Zimsky suddenly does some math in his head and begins declaring something about the last blast needing to be bigger. Next thing you know, Virgil gets hit by some floating rock and the nuke falls on top of Josh trapping him just as the door begins to close. Then the ship makes a sharp turn and the nuke falls onto Zimsky who order Josh to get out and mutters something about using the nuclear fuel rods to make the last one more powerful. Zimsky and the nuke get detached and so noble sacrifice #3 is imminent.
Long story short, Josh removes the plutonium fuel rods from the engine rendering Virgil dead in the water so to speak, adds them to the last nuke, and detaches the final segment. Josh goes back up to meet with Beck and they prepare to die until Josh remembers some of the BLAH BLAH BLAH that Brazelton said earlier about how the ship’s hulls is made from a substance called Plotconveniensum that can convert heat in energy. It works and what’s left of the magic metal tube is able to power up just enough to escape. Lots of big, CGI boom booms and the Earth’s core begins spinning again. Everyone at mission control jumps up and begins applauding just as they always do at the end of movies like this. Beck and Josh drive into a kick ass magma flow and ride that puppy all the way back up to the surface and are neatly deposited on ocean floor somewhere off the coast of Hawaii. I’m just going to ignore the logistics of how it took days to get to the core with numerous obstructions in the way all of which was completely ignored as the ship rocketed back to the surface in a very, very short amount of time. Personally, I was hoping that the pod would come shooting out of an erupting volcano and fly through the air Dukes of Hazzard-style before crash landing on a parked car or something while tourists snapped pictures. Oh, if only this movie had been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer!
Since the movie refuses to end, one last monkey wrench is tossed in for no good reason. Nobody knows precisely where they are located on the ocean floor and Virgil has lost virtually all power so they can’t radio for help. The military searches for hours but all they hear is whale song. A light bulb magically appears above Rat’s head and he deduces that the whale’s are “singing” to Virgil even though there is no possible way you could ever expect me to believe that this is something he would know about or be able to deduce. And when DJ Qualls begins screaming at the top of his lungs and running around with his arms flailing trying to get everyone’s attention, all I know is that if I ever saw someone approaching me like that and I had a firearm, I’d shoot the bastard!
So Josh and Beck get rescued while bemoaning the fact that nobody is ever going to know what really happened or about the three men who made such noble sacrifices to save us all. Josh then utters something along the lines of, “unless someone tells them.”
Fast forward a few months later as Rat enters a cyber café and somehow manages to upload a file onto every single internet connection on Earth detailing what happened and how Sergei, Brazelton, and Zimsky gave their lives to save the world.
Excuse me but are we supposed to believe that something of this magnitude had been successfully kept secret just because they got some egghead on a computer hacking the World Wide Web and deleting files based on specific key words? Two major cities obliterated on live television, unexplained lightning strikes happening all over, people dropping dead for no particular reason, birds going wild all over the globe, strange lights appearing in the sky, and nobody was able to put two and two together because they couldn’t get info off the internet? Hello, ever hear of the television set? How about the telephone? There is no way that all this could occur without somebody somewhere figuring out that something significant was taking place. If Rome (where the Vatican is located) and San Francisco (notorious for its homosexual population) both get destroyed could you just imagine what it would be like tuning into Pat Robertson’s show? He’d be screaming about the end times. Even non-religious people would know something awful is happening. But nooooooooooooooooo!
Rant over. So is the movie. The world knows the truth and the credits roll. The end! Seeing as how heavy handed all the noble sacrifices became I’m amazed the song during the end credits wasn’t “My Sacrifice” by Creed.
As I said at the beginning, the fatal error of THE CORE is that it is neither campy enough nor compelling enough to make for a fully satisfying experience. It teeter-totters between the two at all times and the fact that it is so incredibly formulaic only detracts from it that much more. You’re never completely bored nor are you particularly interested. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end and as soon as the closing credits roll you get up and go home and probably never think about the movie you just saw ever again. It’s a time killer movie and nothing more.
If I were to equate THE CORE to another disaster flick from the past I’d have to say that THE CORE is this generation’s DAMNATION ALLEY. That one was a 1977 sci-fi disaster epic with a ludicrous premise (nuclear war causes Earth to slip off it’s axis), a funky super vehicle, a decent cast given little to work, and a desire to be taken far more seriously than it could possibly ever be. THE CORE is a lot like DAMNATION ALLEY only without the man-eating cockroaches.
Come to think of it, that’s what THE CORE needed - man-eating cockroaches!
The Foywonder
Nice work, man. I still want to see this one and DREAMCATCHER for myself, because I never believe anyone on SF movies until I see them with m’ own two eyes, but I appreciate the effort, as always.
"Moriarty" out.
