Whenever you watch a Gerard Butler action movie, you know you’ll be entertained.
Now, that isn’t to say each and every Gerard Butler action movie is good, far from it. For every decent action movie he’s done (300, Olympus Has Fallen, Den Of Thieves), he seems to have made two bad ones (Hunter Killer, Geostorm, Angel Has Fallen, Gods Of Egypt, Law Abiding Citizen, we could go on…).
But, like we said, even the bad ones are still very entertaining… but that might not actually be the case with his new movie Greenland, as while it is a surprisingly great movie, the plot is maybe a little too close to home to be properly enjoyable.
At any other point in history, this would be easily considered one of his best action movies, but in the middle of what sometimes feels like a pre-apocalypse, a movie about the end of the world and the manic reactions of humanity to those events… well, they cut close to the bone.
The story centres around a family – with Butler and Morena Baccarin (Deadpool) as the estranged husband and wife – making a perilous journey to a potential sanctuary in Greenland with their young son when the world discovers that a planet-killing comet is just a few days from hitting Earth.
The movie got a tiny release in cinemas late last year (not in Ireland, though), during a small window in some countries when cinemas could reopen, but didn’t get the full release it deserved, and this is also the first time that many Irish viewers will have had to check it out.
During that small release, some critics did get to see it, and some of the reactions have been incredibly positive:
The Globe & The Mail – “If you want a movie to nail-gun you to your seat, then you must visit Greenland.”
Vulture – “It’s just escapist enough to fill our disaster-flick needs, but don’t be surprised if Ric Roman Waugh’s film sometimes feels like too much, especially in the middle of an ongoing real-life calamity. To put it a simpler way: Greenland is not just effective; sometimes it’s too effective.”
We Got This Covered – “Gerard Butler’s latest effort reveals a dramatic depth beneath the action man veneer. Brooding, bold and effortlessly engaging, Greenland breaks the mould.”
Chicago Sun-Times – “Unlike the typical, effects-laden, comet-threatens-the-planet B-movie, Greenland is more in the vein of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, with the scenes of chaos and destruction serving as the backdrop for the story of one family’s desperate quest for survival — even when circumstances have ripped them apart.”
Greenland is available to watch at home from today (Friday, 5 February) on Prime Video.
Clip via Prime Video
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