Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, takes a look at a film about a table tennis prodigy who happens to be a real scumbag. Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
GREENLAND
****
A comet is on its way to hit earth. The Garrity family, John, Alison and Nathan, is selected for transport but then thrown off the plane when it is determined that the 7-year-old son has a chronic illness. The family gets separated. They need to reunite and then outrun the catastrophe. But circumstances and crazy people just keep getting in their way. And of course, one of the fragments that will hit earth is expected to be an extinction level event. We’re dealing with a lot of shit here, okay!
My first thought when I heard about this movie was Oh shit, not another Geostorm or another London Has Fallen or another Law Abiding Citizen or any other Gerard Butler crap show.
I have to say that my expectations were exceeded. I previously said that “I am not saying that this is a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s watchable.”
Repeated viewings have made my ratings go up.
This movie is still disaster movie trope city. As the Garritys are trying to reunite, there are drug stores being looted, there are young people who are on rooftops partying waiting for the inevitable (a la Independence Day), Alison and Nathan are separated from their husband and get picked up by a couple that looks very nice but turns out to be a couple of loonies who kick Alison to the curb and kidnap young Nathan.
Gerard Butler is no great actor but he’s a sturdy lead if given the right material and the right director. He was fine in 300. He was fine in Olympus Has Fallen. And he is fine in this movie. His Carl Spackler-like facial expression is hidden by a beard and he is finally given an opportunity to speak in his native Scottish accent. The rest of the acting is pretty wooden, although I’d give the nod to the best acting in the film to none other than David Denman who played Roy in The Office. He plays one of the loonies who kidnaps Nathan and his mania borders on the evangelical.
I’ll give a special separate shout out to the casting of Scott Glenn as Allison’s dad, although he isn’t given much to do but even his few minutes of screen time is well played.
The screenplay is above average for this type of end of the world story. There’s a great deal of thought to what the characters are going through emotionally, and that’s great; but the lousy acting kills any sort of feeling for them. It’s a movie that channels War Of The Worlds-family unity rather than the end of the world motif of When Worlds Collide. The reason Spielberg’s film works is precisely because it is about family. Same here.
This movie doesn’t define Pi. It’s just another end of the world movie as we know it but you know what? I feel fine.
WATCH IT!
GREENLAND 2: MIGRATION
***
In 2020, during the pandemic, the movie Greenland was released directly to streaming. I didn’t have much hopes for it, but — surprise, surprise — it was an absolutely fantastic disaster movie, and was a humongous hit on streaming. Since Gerard Butler is really the king of B-movies this was really his best film in that genre.
When we last met the Garrity family they had evaded meteorites, bad people, exploding planes and all your typical disaster stuff to make it to underground installation at Thule Airbase in Greenland and of course, in true disaster movie fashion, they made it just in the nick of time.
Now, it is five years later and the conditions on Earth still suck, with pressure storms and radiation still contaminating the globe, along with fragments of the Earth-killing meteor Clarke still hitting the Earth — except in Southern France where the Clarke comet hit, causing a massive crater in the ground that seems to be unaffected by these world killing by-products and which appears to be regenerative and a safe haven.
Since people were only supposed to be underground for two years, resources are now very scarce. Risking life and limb, John Garritty ventures out into the wilderness of Greenland to find things that can help the masses survive. However, after earthquakes destroy Thule Airbase, the Garritys and others escape for the mainland. But, of course — just like in 28 Years Later — there are rebel bands everywhere (but no Zombies) and, quite frankly, it’s a dog eat dog world but there are still glimmers of humanity.
The original movie was made for $55 million and had to resort to a real story populated with more than your typical one-dimensional disaster characters. This movie had almost double the budget and you can see that the extra money was going into newer fancier special effects which are terrific. But they skimped on script and in the non-action scenes the film literally drags. The first movie definitely gave you more bang for your buck
Basically, this was the sequel that screamed “Why?”
Except for the fact that the first movie did not make any of its money back because of the pandemic, there was really no reason to make this movie.
However, with a run time of about 90 minutes, not including commercials credits, I wouldn’t consider the movie a bust since the film moved at a rather breakneck pace.
My cinephile friends Roger and Milan would HATE it.
But me, I am easier to please.
THIS ONE’S UP TO YOU.
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
