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THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) and two colleagues are measuring climate changes in Antarctica when the ice ledge on which they are encamped breaks apart. Soon after, Jack is in New Delhi speaking at a conference on global warming. He encourages government officials to act soon to stop the effects of global warming and describes the previous ice age on the earth 10,000 years before. U.S. Vice President Becker (Kenneth Welsh) scoffs at him, but Scottish Professor Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) admires and encourages him.
Jack’s predictions soon come true. It snows in New Delhi and giant hail falls in Tokyo. Los Angeles is destroyed by cyclones, and the temperature across the northern Atlantic Ocean drops suddenly.
When Jack returns to Washington, D.C., and builds a forecast model based on prehistoric climate shifts, his boss reluctantly gives him 48 hours. Meanwhile, his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) leaves on a school trip to New York as three immense storm systems bear down on the northern hemisphere. When Sam is stranded in the New York Public Library by tidal waves and freezing temperatures, his father promises to rescue him.
The influential Cheney-like vice president totally scoffs at the 1997 Kyoto Accord to control the emission of greenhouse gases that the United States refused to sign, placing the interests of the economy above the fragile environment.
The environmental themes of this film resonate well with Catholic social teaching: Pope John Paul II speaks about the integrity of creation and care for the earth in his address every January 1. The film reminds us to heed the consequences of our environmental choices that form the physical context for life on our planet.
Perhaps the most obvious and ironic social-justice theme is that our citizens must flee south of the border to escape the climate changes. For once, the United States is not the savior of the world. Some frightening nature scenes; this recommended political disaster movie is a wake up call on many levels.
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