Greenland: A Good Movie At War With Itself

Gerard Butler's Greenland is a disaster movie for people tired of the genre. Its premise of a dysfunctional family trying to reach safety before a comet named Clark subjects Earth to an extinction-level event isn't entirely unfamiliar or satisfying. Still, the way Greenland behaves is undeniably refreshing. This movie isn't as concerned with Clark as it is with how people react to Clark, making the story and the emotions it relies upon strangely graspable. At its best, it's like something straight out of a newsreel, featuring people running in stores and kicking in doors. It captures something other disaster movies can't or won't: the animalistic desperation of an otherwise contemporary society that knows it's in its last days.

The storytelling of Greenland is surprisingly subdued, and I find this to be the most impressive thing about it. Its groundedness captures a strange air of honesty, especially compared to other disaster movies in the vein of Geostorm. An extinction-level event would affect you and your neighbors on a profoundly personal level, and Greenland doesn't shy away from inherent tragedy. I got knots in my stomach at points watching what I can only describe as sheer desperation play out, and you will, too. Watching a society tear itself apart through panic is intriguing yet disturbing. Equally fascinating and troubling are those who are indifferent not only to Clark but to all the suffering it's wrought, living it up for what little time they have left. It's as if the movie displays a wide variety of different reactions to Armageddon and then asks an unspoken question - what would you do?

Greenland is a rather humorless affair, opting for a relative sense of believability instead. Though it doesn't outrun all the cliches of its genre, gone are the empty panoramas of cities going up in flames, the famous landmarks being flattened for the twelfth time, and worst of all, the unfunny jokes from that one extremely unlikable supporting character. Replacing them is a gang of armed looters invading a trashed and dimly lit pharmacy, gritty hand-to-hand combat with a hammer-wielding assailant on the side of a freeway, and people everywhere being reduced to their baser instincts in the name of survival. Greenland is oftentimes far less like The Day After Tomorrow and far more like the earlier seasons of Fear The Walking Dead, containing threads of trust, mistrust, societal collapse, and even marital reconciliation.

On the downside, much of this movie's formula is simple - too simple. Something goes wrong, the family is forced to find a solution, the situation evolves, and they're subjected to some realistic, intense encounter - rinse and repeat. Such a tactic is occasionally hard on the movie's pacing, and while this movie is surprisingly good, it's not perfect, nor should you expect it to be. Greenland is far more emotional than practical, a welcome departure from the usual clinical disaster movie formula that nevertheless stumbles over itself at points. While it sustains undeniable thrust, it sometimes lacks focus, and the movie can occasionally boil down to a series of encounters without much tying them together. Greenland is a good human drama at war with the periodic demands of its cataclysmic backdrop, a necessary sacrifice that's still felt keenly.

Though imperfect, Greenland is a weirdly believable assault on the senses, managing to capture the tragedy of a world-ending cataclysm in a way few other disaster movies have. If you've come looking for a fun destruction-fest, I hope I've made it clear that you've come to the wrong place. And yet, despite shirking many of its genre's bad habits, I still found myself wanting more from this movie. The most interesting parts of Greenland have the least to do with the comet, which puts me in a weird position as a reviewer. Do I praise this movie for its clever spin on the disaster genre, or do I criticize it for enslaving itself to a premise that demands a level of imperfection? Nevertheless, what this movie accomplishes is remarkable despite its flaws because while it may not be perfect, it's nothing less than good.

It turns out that maybe the end of the world isn't as silly as Hollywood would have us believe after all.

Greenland - 7/10

Revelation 8:10-13