Modern disaster movies tend to sacrifice character development and human interest at the altar of state-of-the-art visual effects and the end result is usually a film that really can’t hold a candle to the 1970s classics that defined the genre. Greenland – more modestly budgeted than recent howlers like Geostorm and Into the Storm – reverses the trend and delivers an often stomach-churningly tense movie that concerns itself first and foremost with the plight of well-drawn, believable ordinary people battling to stay alive in the direst of circumstances. It also starkly depicts the very worst of human nature, the savagery, and desperation that goes hand in hand with our most basic survival instinct.
Scottish architect John Garrity (Gerrard Butler), estranged from his family for reasons we only discover late on in the movie, returns home to his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) to celebrate his young son’s birthday with friends and neighbours. The so-called Clarke comet is due to skim close to the Earth, delivering a cosmic fireworks display but likely to cause no damage to the planet. John, his family and guests watched appalled as the TV relays images of a chunk of the comet entering the atmosphere and laying waste to most of Florida. John receives an automated phone message from the Department of Homeland Security, informing him that he and his family have been pre-selected for emergency sheltering. John bundles up his family and heads for the airport as directed while society starts to crumble and the population stars to panic. Meanwhile, the sky is alight with burning debris… and before long, news outlets are reporting that an ‘extinction level event’-sized chunk is due to smash into Europe in just a few days. Can John keep his family together and reach the mysterious shelter before the end of the world as we know it… or will fate step in and throw terrible obstacles in their path?
Greenland works so wonderfully because it doesn’t focus on spectacle – there are a handful of stunning set pieces, particularly towards the end of the film – but it concentrates very firmly on the plight of John and his family and the people they meet along the way as they struggle with odds that seem pretty unsurmountable. John (a terrific performance from Gerrard Butler) is no two-fisted action hero; like Tom Cruise in Spielberg’s much-maligned 2005 take on The War of the Worlds, he’s just an ordinary blue collar worker who finds himself out of his depth and forced to do things he’d never dreamed of to protect his loved ones. Butler is matched beat-for-beat by Morena Baccarin as Allison whose desperation and despair will rip you apart, particularly in one shattering sequence where she is horribly betrayed by strangers she has trusted.
Greenland was originally slated to star Marvel’s Chris Evans, with Neill Blomkamp on directing duties and whilst we’ll obviously never know how the film might have turned out if they’d remained on board, the combination of Butler and replacement director Ric Roman Waugh (who worked with Butler in 2019’s Angel Has Fallen potboiler) has delivered a thrilling, visceral disaster movie. Greenland feels uncomfortably realistic – especially in the current climate – and keeps its feet squarely on the ground by focusing on the humanity rather than the spectacle, only sliding slightly into more fanciful Hollywood territory in the last reel. But if you can tolerate more doom and gloom as 2020 bows its shameful head and prepares to exit stage left, you’ll find that Greenland is a smart, tough, intense experience and absolutely not the disaster we might have expected.
