A Review of “Greenland (2020)″

 

Gerald Butler has been a man that has been in a lot of really bad movies yet despite that I still watch his movies because of his great Scottish accent. Greenland is another disaster movie that stars Gerald Butler. The premise is that “John Garrity (Gerald Butler), his estranged wife (Morena Baccarin) and their young son (Roger Dale Floyd) embark on a perilous journey to find sanctuary as a planet-killing comet hurtles toward Earth”. Since Gerald Butler movies are mostly a miss, I didn’t go into this one with high expectations. Is Greenland terrible like his other disaster movie Geostorm or is this an actual good one?

Firstly, I appreciate that this movie takes a serious and more grounded tone and does it well. A fair amount of disaster movies feel really over the top or a bit too cartooney and slapstick like “2012”. The characters all act like humans and all the interactions feel human which is a breath of fresh air in these type of movies.  Another element of this movie that is quite distinct is the heart and kindness within the movie. Apocalyptic movies or TV shows tend to focus on the worst of people but Greenland focuses on the opposite. Albeit there are scenes with the worst of people for sure. A recurring theme in the movie is the act of kindness and while watching this movie in a pandemic (Coronavirus), it’s easy to appreciate the good deeds that are shown in the movie. The director (Ric Roman Waugh) and writer (Chris Sparling) show the different ways that people handle this cataclysm including individuals who would just party, riot or remain kind that feels believable. The action scenes with the Earth’s destruction do occur in the movie but the human drama is the main focus.

Speaking of the action scenes, while rare, are visually spectacular and lead to some stunning and tense moments. For the most part, the CGI is pretty good but it does get really bad and jarring in the third act. Likewise, the cast does a pretty good job. Morena Baccarin gives a good performance as a fiercely loving mother that is desperate to protect her son. Gerald Butler is a lot better in this movie than a lot of his previous movies even though he is still mostly just the gruff-looking dad. Roger Dale Floyd who is the child actor is not unbearable like a fair amount of child actors. All three of them are mostly giving okay performances but every one of them has one moment where their performance shines.

When it comes to flaws it is mostly concerning the way the story is progressing. For the movie to last 2 hours, there are a lot of moments where our main characters tend to make jarring decisions. Most of this is concerning the wife who I just feel makes a lot of dumb decisions in this movie. You do have to kind of shut your brain to watch this movie or else you will constantly go question a lot of things. The movie also has some pacing issues in my opinion as at some points it feels like it dragging a bit and slowing the movie. The movie does start to feel a bit long and could have cut 10-15 minutes off the total run time.

On that point of characters, they are quite bland. The movie never really delves into the characters that much and instead are more focusing on their situation. This can work such as in “Dunkirk (2017)” but for this movie, I feel they should have explored a bit more about our characters. Apart from the dad John who is a structural engineer, I don’t know much about the wife Allison and I don’t know much about the kid apart from he is diabetic which is the main thing that keeps this movie going for 2 hours. It’s slightly difficult to be fully invested in caring about the characters. We also get a revelation near the beginning of the third act that feels irrelevant and if anything makes it more difficult for me to care about the characters.

Overall, this is a surprisingly all-right movie from Gerald Butler. It’s not the garbage that was Geostorm which is great. With all the gloom that is happening in the real world, this movie provides some mild entertainment with a hopeful message that is maybe something we kind of need at this time. You definitely won’t feel like it was the worst 2 hours you spent after watching this movie.