Johnson Thomas
An unrealistic survival actioner
Film: Greenland 2: Migration
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Roman Griffin Davis, Amber Rose Revah, Nelia Valero de Costa, Gisli Orn Gardasson
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Rating: * * 1/2
Runtime: 98 min
Ric Roman Waugh’s “Greenland,” released during the pandemic, was a story about an estranged family learning to deal with one another at a time of disaster. The movie had sufficient doses of emotion, action and suspense to garner attention.
The opening credits montage sequence has visual resonance. The highlight here is the Eiffel Tower missing it’s top half. Earth is still reeling from the after effects of the impact of a meteor. Radiation and frequent earthquakes render living in any place risky. “Migration” begins five years after Greenland, instability in the region has made bunker living impossible and John Garrity (Gerard Butler) an ordinary guy caught up in an extraordinary situation, is back trying to get through to his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) and now-teenaged son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis), that they need to keep moving to safety. Radiation exposure has taken its toll on John and the perilous journey across the frozen wasteland of Europe is going to be tough.
They have already over-stayed in their current bunker, supplies have grown scarce, and severe tremors make their survival precarious. John and his family, among others, those lucky enough to escape via lifeboat, hope that what a scientist among them (Amber Rose Revah) theorized, that the biggest crater left by one of Clarke’s fragments, might actually contain basic necessities for life and provide protection from the radiation storms, might be true.
“Greenland” was a adequately exciting disaster film but it’s over-indulgence in special effects towards its end was quite off-putting. The plight of the Garritys though was fairly compelling. A sequel was not expected though.
There’s nothing much that’s original about this sequel. Screenwriters Mitchell LaFortune and Chris Sparling and Waugh seem to have put together elements, bits and pieces, from several successful disaster/horror films to arrive at this refurbished construct. There’s not much happening on the inter-familial front either. New characters introduced are disposed off without getting time to make their mark. The special effects don’t live up to standard expectations either. And the probability that the Clarke crater left behind from the strike would become a site of thriving life forms in 5 years is conceptually nonviable.
This sequel has a few emotionally resonant moments and is intermittently gripping. It’s a bit chaotic and the conflict and decisions don’t count as original anymore. Obstacles are resolved all too easily. Characters are many and all-too-forgettable. The opening sequence was gravitating but thereafter the movie loses steam. As a result, there’s hardly any tension and the gravity of the situation never hits home.
Cinematographer Martin Ahlgren shot on the Sony VENICE 2 and visually the setup ticks all the right boxes. Yet the scale feels constrained and the soft ending feels like a cop-out. At best this is a serviceable disaster movie, set in a post-apocalyptic world. However, the illogical turns make it suspect!
johnsont307@gmail.com
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