Despite falling into the genre tropes, Greenland remains a highly watchable, if ultimately flawed, character-driven disaster movie.
John Garrity (Gerard Butler) is an Atlanta-based architect who has recently moved back in with his estranged wife, Allison (Morena Baccarin) and son, Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd.) Things are awkward between John and Allison but they’re working at it. Putting on a brave face for their friends, they invite them over for a barbeque.
John receives a strange phone call while out shopping for supplies for the party. A “Presidential Alert” informs him that he’s been chosen — along with Allison and Nathan — to be taken to shelter. News reports have mentioned that a comet, named Clarke, would pass by Earth providing little more than a spectacular light show in the sky. The comet’s fragments were not expected to have any direct impact on the planet. That has obviously changed.
Greenland documents the Garritys’ attempts to get to safety in the face of an extinction level event. Directed by Ric Ramon Waugh (Angel Has Fallen), the movie focuses on the family more so than the impending disaster. What could have been effects-driven, disaster porn like San Andreas or The Day After Tomorrow is much more character-centric than I expected. That’s not to say we don’t see cities destroyed or the aftermath. We definitely do. However, rather than framing the catastrophic devastation as a showcase for the special effects team, the majority of the damage is revealed to the characters through news media in brief snippets.
At first, Greenland seems as if it’s going to be a breath of fresh air in the disaster movie genre. The initial setup and reveal of Clarke, the planet-killing comet, is masterfully done. Waugh handles the confusion of packing for a trip to an unknown destination with the right mix of tension and chaos. It doesn’t hurt that Butler, Baccarin, and Floyd’s performances are convincing. As it progresses, however, the movie settles into a cycle of separating the family members, having them face some sort of trouble, and then bestowing incredible luck upon them to reunite unscathed. Compounded with that are the numerous, overworked volunteers and first responders who repeatedly drop everything to help the Garritys as if they were more important than anyone else. For a film that was winning me over by avoiding genre clichés, this was particularly irksome but not entirely unexpected.
Despite falling into the genre tropes, Greenland remains a highly watchable, if ultimately flawed, character-driven disaster movie.
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
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