REVIEW: Greenland is a disaster movie that hits close to home
Rating: PG13 (Some violence)
Length: 120 minutes
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Writer: Chris Sparling
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin
Score: 3 out of 5 stars
Despite what the title suggests, Greenland actually opens with a sweeping view of downtown Atlanta, Georgia. John Garrity (Gerard Butler) is a structural engineer who is trying to juggle work and life, whilst also navigating a tense separation from his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin). While on a trip home to celebrate his son Nathan’s (Roger Dale Floyd) birthday, John is tasked with getting some extra party supplies. A simple enough mission, except he gets a Presidential Alert on his phone while in the middle of the supermarket. A potentially cataclysmic comet is hurtling its way towards Earth, and John’s family has been selected by the US government to escape to sanctuary. With only 48 hours to catch their designated flight, the three of them end up racing against time in a desperate fight for their lives.
John’s job as a structural engineer has marked him out as an essential worker in a post-impact society, which is why he and his family have been selected for the privilege of being whisked away to safety. Unfortunately, a series of events separates him from his family, and along their journey to find each other again, director Ric Roman Waugh (most famous for directing 2019’s Angel Has Fallen) and writer Chris Sparling pull out all of the usual disaster movie tropes and cliches. There’re lots of twists, a lot of overwrought emotion, and lots and lots of pyrotechnic CGI.
The plot might sound far-fetched, but it may not be as wild as one might think. Comets and other bits of space debris often make their way towards us, but only a small fraction of them enter Earth’s atmosphere. Then again, scientists do theorise that an asteroid hitting Earth was what wiped out the dinosaurs, and Greenland taps into this niggling fear with its fictional comet, Clarke. Initially predicted to break up into smaller fragments that burn up in the atmosphere, these fragments end up destroying entire cities around the globe. Of course, this is just an excuse to insert the now customary CGI montage of familiar landmarks in ruins and suburban neighbourhoods reduced to yawning craters.
It’s likely that movie audiences will see all the twists a mile away, but they have reached a new sort of poignancy as the world reels from the effects of a pandemic. The movie touches on things like privilege, class, immigrant issues, people with chronic illnesses, and the fundamental decency of human beings during an apocalypse, but they are never really fully developed. Instead, the plot focuses squarely on the tired and well-worn subject of family and being there for each other.
In a move that made this reviewer breathe a sigh of relief, Butler retains his native Scottish accent here, but other than that, there isn’t much in the script for him to really sink his teeth into. Still, his performance is a solid, decent one even if the role doesn’t require much of him. Baccarin is always a treat to watch on screen, but here the character of Allison is only ever shown in her role as estranged wife and mother, with no indication of what her life was like before.
Still, the decision to focus on the Garritys mean that there aren’t the usual secondary subplots that usually clog up movies like this. This focus also means that the movie is actually relatable even amidst the chaos that COVID-19 has thrown society into. In this current climate, most people have been sheltering in place with their families and loved ones and have been forced to reevaluate what is really important to their lives, and this parallel in Greenland is likely to strike a chord in many moviegoers.
Greenland opens in Singapore on 13 August, and in Malaysia on 24 September.
