GREENLAND ★★★½
Rated MA15+, 120 minutes, Amazon Prime
Disaster movies, by and large, are not about disasters. They’re about the triumph of the human family when faced with overwhelming odds. When was the last disaster film you saw where everyone, including the main stars, actually died? Imagine a big new screen movie about Pompeii that told the truth – ‘no survivors’ isn’t a great selling point.
Gerard Butler in a scene from the Amazon Prime film Greenland.Credit:Amazon Prime
Greenland is better than that, while still respecting the rules of the genre. It has more brains than I expected from a disaster film, because it’s about some real and present dangers. Gerard Butler, with his firm Scottish jaw, is a reassuring leading man, although it was once going to be Chris Evans. Who’s better, Captain America or the guy who has saved more presidents than Clint Eastwood?
Butler’s character John builds skyscrapers in Atlanta. He has a classic American gabled house in a rich suburb, but he no longer lives there because he and his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) have separated, to the distress of their little boy Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd), who has Type 1 diabetes. The boy is excited by the news of the Clarke comet, passing near earth. Then fiery bombs start falling from the sky and we’re underway. Tampa is toast, but John and family are racing north, trying to outrun the conflagration.
