GREENLAND (2020)

In "Greenland," Global Destruction Takes a Back Seat to Family

Grade: A

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Upon first seeing the trailers for the movie Greenland, starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin, I didn’t think much of it. Let’s face it: if you’ve seen one end-of-the-world disaster movie, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Unless, of course, a movie comes along that does something new with the formula.

What Greenland does new is actually focus on the people caught up in the crisis; in this case, an average American family. Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (2009) also featured an American family, but their dynamic was largely sacrificed in favor of clichés and CGI destruction. Some cliches are present with the family in Greenland, with the husband and wife estranged from the outset, but they don’t give way to melodrama; the couple genuinely cares about their marriage, and are trying to make it work. And most of the destruction is either described off-screen on radio announcements or shown on television…and that is where the movie may lose its audience.

The family in question includes John (Butler) and Allison Garrity (Baccarin), and their son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd). The family and some neighbors are getting ready for the imminent arrival of Clarke, a newly-discovered comet expected to pass close to Earth…a little too close, it turns out. The film establishes suspense early on as the sky is ominously filled with planes, and John receives a message on his phone telling him that his family is being relocated. Then everyone learns that the comet and the pieces surrounding it are expected to strike the earth, wiping out most life-and so the race is on to get to Greenland, where bunkers await that hopefully provide shelter from the coming apocalypse.

Believe it or not, most of the thrills in the movie come not from the impending disaster, but from the perils the family face as they try to get from A to B while staying together. Along the way, they meet people who either help or hinder their progress. They get separated at an airport, and a fuel leak destroys one of the planes. Nathan is kidnapped by two refugees who throw Allison out of the car. John is forced to kill a man in self-defense when said man tries to steal is ID bracelet, which helps refugees get onto planes. And all the while, the sky is glowing orange as pieces of the comet drop all over the world.

Director Ric Roman Waugh and his cast do a terrific job in making the danger seem real. This is certainly not the first disaster movie to depict a group of people trying to escape a catastrophe, but it is certainly one of the most vivid.

Where the movie stumbles-or doesn’t stumble, depending on how you feel-is devoting screen time to the actual disaster. Aside from an intense bit where fire rains down from the sky during a traffic jam, there are very few of the comet fragments encountered by the protagonists before the finale. But ultimately this does little to detract from the movie’s entertainment value; while it certainly would’ve been exciting to see more of the comet’s effects around the world, the struggles of the main characters are exhilarating in their own way.

Greenland is proof that the disaster genre still has potential, and it illustrates the fact that stories about the end of the world are most effective when you care about the ones trying to survive. If you download Greenland expecting to see a slam-bang action thriller in the style of Armageddon (1998) or 2012, you may feel dissatisfied. But if you’re just hoping to see a thrilling disaster movie with great characters, you won’t be disappointed.

3/21/2021

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Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Producers: Gerard Butler, Basil Iwanyk, Sebastien Raybaud, Alan Spiegel

Screenplay: Chris Sparling

Cast: Gerard Butler (John Garrity), Morena Baccarin, (Allison Garrity), Roger Dale Floyd (Nathan Garrity), Scott Glenn (Dale)

Rated: PG-13 (for intense sequences of disaster action, some violence, bloody images and brief strong language)