Greenland (15)

Structural engineer John Garrity leaves work early to prepare for a neighbourhood party with his estranged wife Allison and their young son Nathan. A comet named Clarke is due to pass perilously close to Earth, providing 24-hour TV news channels with an interstellar light show to broadcast live to the jaw-dropped world. The Garritys and their friends watch in wonderment and then horror as a fragment of Clarke hits Florida, razing miles of heavily populated land.

LondonNet Film Review
Greenland (15)

Structural engineer John Garrity (Gerard Butler) leaves work early to prepare for a neighbourhood party with his estranged wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) and their young son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd). A comet named Clarke is due to pass perilously close to Earth, providing 24-hour TV news channels with an interstellar light show to broadcast live to the jaw-dropped world. The Garritys and their friends watch in wonderment and then horror as a fragment of Clarke hits Florida, razing miles of heavily populated land…

As the gravity of the situation sinks in – the world is witnessing an extinction-level event – John and his loved ones are selected for immediate evacuation to underground bunkers in Greenland. The family races to make a flight from Warner Robins Air Force Base as the fabric of society unravels at sickening speed around them.

Punctuated by special effects-laden action sequences that reduce capital cities to smouldering rubble, Greenland is an entertaining disaster movie that chooses to glimpse the devastation through the eyes of one desperate family in transit. Butler broods and swaggers, specifically referencing his Scottish burr in expository dialogue, while Baccarin and young co-star Floyd are put through the emotional wringer in harrowing scenes with two passing Samaritans (David Denman, Hope Davis).

Deviations from plausibility are fleeting to maintain a strong emotional focus on characters and their plight. The darkness coursing beneath the surface of Chris Sparling’s muscular script is surprisingly vivid – when the end is nigh, the ugliest facets of the human condition are exposed. If Clarke doesn’t kill us, greed, envy and wrath will.

– Jo Planter