Brexit was a Bitch
Well, at least the title is timely.
Greenland 2: Migration
Director: Ric Roman Waugh • Writers: Mitchell LaFortune, Chris Sparling
Starring: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, Amber Rose Revah, William Abadie, Nelia Valery Da Costa, Sophie Thompson, Ken Nwosu
USA / UK • 1hr 38mins
Opens Hong Kong January 29 • IIA
Grade: C-
Just so we’re all clear: The Greenland of this disaster romp has nothing to do with the Greenland at the centre of the most boneheaded territorial row since the British/French/Spanish decided colonising the Americas was a bang up idea. This Greenland is a fantastical place that miraculously survived a wypipo clusterfuck and… Wait. I take it back.
In all seriousness, Greenland 2: Migration (in case you forgot, many moons ago the original was a project for Middle Chris, Evans and Neill Blomkamp and I wonder what that looks like) follows the continuing adventures of your friend and mine, the King of January Action Gerard Butler (Plane, Den of Thieves) as John Garrity, an engineer who weaseled his and his family’s way into a survival bunker in the wake of an extinction-level comet strike that levelled most of the world back in… 2020. Yikes, there’s just so much meta in this film. Returning director/Butler enabler Ric Roman Waugh (Kandahar, Angel Has Fallen), also returning writer Chris Sparling and Mitchell LaFortune (yup, you guessed it, Kandahar) pretty much go through the paces here. Migration is mostly dull and uncharacteristically low energy for G.But, though admittedly there are a few chuckles/drinking games to be found in the contrived plot points – how long before an outrageous French accent? How many nice people can the Garritys meet who last a grand total of seven minutes? – and apolgies to the screening audience who had to suffer a private crack I couldn’t help making but that I blurted out much louder than intended. Truly. Mea culpa. But you know that was the high point of a by-the-numbers sequel cash grab whose most interesting visual is just how beefy Butler’s fingers are.
The chillest tsunami eve
By way of explaining why everyone is still living inside the damn bunker despite coming out at the end of the first film, we start with a lovely exposition dump by Garrity, detailing how in the five years since, the comet, called Clarke, wasn’t quite done shitting all over Earth, how the fragments kept landing and kept decimating, how the surface was a veritable Road Warrior-style post-apocalyptic hellscape of degradation and mercenary survivalism. Garrity goes on regular jaunts to test the air and scavenge, which one day turns up a few lifeboats (?), a naval destroyer run aground and a gaggle of extra survivors the bunker can’t really handle. Allison (Morena Baccarin in teary-yet-steely mom mode) and Nathan (now played by Roman Griffin Davis), the diabetic son that caused no end of contrived “challenges” in the first film (put your fuckin’ insulin in a pocket with a zipper, dumbass) are not dead: she’s on city council (?) and Nathan is rebelling by going outside on the DL and looking at girls. Garrity and his engineer pal Lars (Trond Fausa Aurvåg) see cracks forming in the bunker walls one day, and before you can say “Go, go, go!” (most of the dialogue in Act I) the bunker is collapsing and there’s pandemonium on the beach.
Long story short biologist (climatologist? environmental scientist?) Dr Amina (Amber Rose Revah) has the Garritys, Lars and some other re-survivors heading to the UK as a waystation to France, where Clarke’s OG strike zone is actually, potentially, a liveable sub-ecosphere. Along for the ride, at various stages, are Obi, a Nigerian immigrant to the what’s left of the UK, and Camille, the daughter of Frenchman Denis, who he wants to get a life in the crater zone.
Greenland 2: Migration is possibly the first example I can recall of passive-aggressive action filmmaking, emphasis on passive. The first one had a couple of solid white-knuckle moments in it when Clarke started raining down fire and brimstone, and it raised that time-waster to relatively effective diversion. Migration, however is eerily restrained. The major set pieces – a sudden tsunami, the lifeboat drifting above a submerged Liverpool, a cavern where the English Channel used to be (they warned us crossing to Europe from the UK post-Brexit would be a pain in the ass but this is craziness), a mad dash through a modern No Man’s Land to the neutral zone near the crater – all come and go in a matter of minutes, leaving zero impression and certainly never rising to the level of even Roland Emmerich lunacy. Ditto for the mostly faceless characters that come and go around the Garritys, all of whom are dispatched for whatever reason in record time; no idea who any of them are. Even Butler looks unamused, displaying none of the 21st century, puffy neo-machismo that’s become his calling card. He never opens up a messy can of whup-ass, instead spending most of his time coughing blood into a handerkechief. Uh oh. You know what that means. Get ready for Greenland 3: The Genesis Project. Although with those box office numbers…