Released: December 2020
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Rated PG-13
Run Time: 119 Minutes
Distributor: STX Films
Genre: Action/Drama/Thriller
Cast:
Gerard Butler: John Garrity
Morena Baccarin: Allison Garrity
Roger Dale Floyd: Nathan Garrity
Scott Glenn: Dale
Randal Gonzalez: Bobby
You want to know something that’s better than watching people on Earth blow shit up? Watching nature doing it for them. But here’s the thing: Nature’s far more creative when it comes to dishing out mass destruction than humanity is. Earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, viruses. Nature has a massive arsenal whenever she decides to punish humanity for being stupid. Every so often however, when nature determines that we really done fucked up, she will reach into the heavens, grab some space rocks and use Earth as target practice in the same way that kids would use moving cars as target practice on the highway. Watching nature lose her temper in disaster movies is always entertaining, especially if it’s done right. I’ve loved these movies since I was a kid. It’s a genre that’s been around for decades. It was initially made popular in the 70s with movies like Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. It found a resurgence in the late 90s with movies like Twister, Volcano, and Dante’s Peak. Towards the end of the 90s, we also got a number of movies that dealt with meteors and comets. Specifically, Armageddon and Deep Impact. Both movies dealt with earth-shattering space rocks, yet both were very different kinds of movies. While Armageddon was a bombastic special effects-driven extravaganza, Deep Impact was more character-driven in terms of how it dealt with an impending meteor strike. So, last year, we were supposed to get a new disaster movie centered around a potential meteor strike called Greenland. Sadly, the movie got pushed back to the point where the distributors were kind of forced to put it on VOD. But is it a good movie? Let’s find out.
Greenland follows John Garrity, a structural engineer with a bit of a marriage problem. Leaving work early to attend his son’s birthday party, the news reports that a comet could be passing by soon. After John spends some time with his kid, he gets a call on his cellphone that he and his family have been selected by the government to find shelter at a top-secret location. As it turns out, that comet, nicknamed Clark, has broken apart with lots of fragments heading towards Earth. One of those larger fragments obliterates the city of Tampa in Florida. Realizing that this isn’t a drill, John, takes Allison and Nathan and try to find their way to safety before the largest piece of the comet hits Earth, obliterating everything on the surface. In all honesty, the story here is pretty typical of an asteroid/comet/meteor movie. You have a family trying to find their way to safety, only to get separated at some point. They find each other, and they have to find an alternate way of getting to a safe place before disaster strikes. Pretty common story-line. Greenland’s approach to this story is what separates this movie from the pack. While most movies would have the audience experience by being in their face with eye-melting special effects, Greenland takes a more restrained approach, much like Deep Impact. Instead, we witness the disaster as the family does through news reports, at least initially. Telling the story through the eyes of the family allows the audience to connect more with these characters. To be fair, though, Greenland does draw upon the typical tropes associated with disaster movies, especially towards the end of the film, but considering how well the rest of the film was handled, it’s kind of a minor nitpick.
Since Greenland is a more character-driven film than your average disaster film, let’s take a look at the characters. Leading the pack is John Garrity, played by action-movie veteran Gerard Butler. Instead of taking on a weak American accent, Butler uses his natural Scottish accent in the film, which makes the character far more approachable. I’m generally not a fan of actors taking on American accents, only for them to butcher it. I’m sure they don’t like us butchering THEIR accents. Gerard Butler plays a relatively normal person this time around, and he’s actually really good here. His character feels realistic in that John has some issues with his marriage, but he tries to connect with his son. Morena Baccarin plays his wife, Allison, and she is so much more than eye-candy. There is real depth to this character in how she handles her husband and kid, but also the world coming apart. While I’m not a big fan of kids in movies, every once in a while, you get one that’s smart and isn’t put into jeopardy because the film-makers wanted to add tension. There’s enough tension in this movie without some dumb kid putting himself in harm’s way. Roger Dale Floyd plays Nathan, John Garrity’s son. This kid’s got talent. He comes across as a likable and adorable kid that you really hope survives. Screen legend Scott Glenn shows up as Allison’s father, Dale, and he’s fantastic. I’ve always like Scott in whatever he’s doing, because he generally has an intensity behind those eyes. But here, he’s got this connection with the other three characters that’s just fantastic. He comes across as pretty gruff at first, but over the short time that he’s in the film, you start to like him pretty quickly. The characters and the acting are at the heart of the film here, and they knock it out of the park. Color me impressed.
A low-to-modest budgeted disaster film? Who would’ve thought that it would be pretty good. You can definitely tell that the film doesn’t have the budget of something like Armageddon, and that’s part of why it worked so well. The film’s approach to showing the audience the comet strikes, as I said before, is fairly restrained. But no mistake about it, when those things hit, they HIT, and it’s spectacular, especially towards the end when the final piece are hitting the planet. That’s pretty damn good CGI for a movie that was made for about 50 million. Again, though, that wasn’t necessarily the main focus of the film. It was made to show on the ground level how people and the government would respond to such a catastrophe. It feels very real, especially in terms of how the government would select certain people and families for survival. The looting, the riots, and the social chaos that you see throughout the film is what you would seen a real-world catastrophe. Yet, at the same time when people are resorting to their base instincts, you do see throughout the film the best in humanity, especially when it comes to the medical professionals and some of the civilians. As dark and serious as the film is, it does show some of the best of humanity at work. This is also a very intense movie. From the moment the first piece of the comet hits the planet, it’s pedal to the metal.
Truth be told, I went into this movie expecting something incredibly cheesy on the same level as Armageddon. I was shocked to find that Greenland ended up being surprisingly unique take on an old genre-style film. Instead of being overly bombastic like other films, Greenland had the audacity to take a more intimate approach, by seeing this particular event through the eyes of one family. Does the film fall on old disaster movie-style tropes? Sure, but in some ways, that’s almost endearing for a movie that takes a situation like this seriously. Gerard Butler puts in one of his better performances, and the action sequences are thrilling. Honestly, I actually would recommend this one. While I don’t necessarily think it’s going to be a cult classic, it certainly stands above a lot of other disaster flicks, but it adds the right amount of humanity to make it worthwhile.
My Final Recommendation: 8.5/10. It’s a smashing good time.