movie review
GREENLAND 2: MIGRATION
Running time: 98 minutes. Rated PG-13 (some strong violence, bloody images, and action). In theaters.
Welcome to “Greenland 2.”
No, not the 51st state — the unnecessary bore of a sequel starring gruntin’ Gerard Butler.
The Scottish actor with the gravelly growl of an acid reflux sufferer who just got out of bed has a well-known habit of appearing in crummy films. “Gods of Egypt,” “London Has Fallen,” “Geostorm,” pick your poison.
So reliably bad is his output that his presence alone has become a kind of manufacturer’s guarantee of low quality.
But, in a refreshing change, Butler actually churned out a decent disaster flick called “Greenland” six years ago, which became a surprise hit on paid streaming services. Not much else released in 2020 can make that claim.
About 15 minutes into its flaccid follow-up, “Greenland 2: Migration,” it’s abundantly clear that his rare, watchable credit was a fluke. Now we’re back to Butler as usual.
The inferior second part, short but not nearly short enough, proves just how ill-prepared its creators were for the original’s success.
With No. 1, director Ric Roman Waugh and writer Chris Sparling did a fine, if bleak, job at guessing how humanity might react to an impending impact with a comet.
Getting disaster deja vu? “Greenland” hinged on the same basic apocalyptic circumstance of “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact,” only with fewer characters and more fatalism.
John (Butler), his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) and son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd) raced to board a special government plane to Greenland to make a new life in a secret underground base.
On the way, they encountered violent foes who’d do anything to steal their coveted spots. The gist was that our own primal instincts are every bit as menacing as the giant space rock.
These filmmakers obviously had no plan for what came next. So, they copied other movies — including their own! Once again, the loving parents and their frustrated teen hop from place to place in search of a safe haven, meeting brutes and a couple of Good Samaritans along the way.
The aliens of “A Quiet Place” and the infecteds of “28 Days Later” are swapped for nondescript, gun-toting men in war zones. The seemingly organized battalions are fighting over I’m not sure what.
“Migration” is set half a decade after the comet called Clarke collided with the planet. Civilization has been decimated. The Eiffel Tower is comically bent and the Sydney Opera House is generically grayish green to suggest decay. About 75% of the world, we’re told, is uninhabitable due to destruction and radiation.
Even the subterranean base, where we exhaustingly watch the survivors do yoga and dance around, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The shelter is destroyed early on by an underground tremor. So, John, Allison and Nathan must set off for the site of the comet’s crater in the south of France, which is rumored to be lush and protected.
On their snoozy journey through the repetitive dreary wasteland, they encounter bullets and sand. That’s it. The filmmakers use that vague 25%-of-Earth-is-relatively-OK rule to lazily justify how the family can trek from Greenland to continental Europe without being microwaved.
Action sequences involving a “Perfect Storm”-like wave and a perilous rope bridge are neither exciting nor scary. They’re merely cold segues between scenes, like pipe connectors.
There is just one significant complication introduced. Butler coughs a lot throughout the ugly-looking film, so it doesn’t take a scholar to surmise what’s in store for John. The rest is steady as she goes.
And that’s why “Migration” is so plain, especially for a risky road trip that crosses both the Atlantic Ocean and English Channel. It’s implausibly routine.
Society is supposed to have endured a dinosaur-level extinction event, and I’ve had more death-defying cab rides to LaGuardia. There are functioning cars, plenty of food and even uncorked bottles of wine. Seems all right to me.
And, without a countdown to impact to maintain an intense mood throughout, “Migration” depends on strong acting to support quieter, introspective moments.
Uh oh. That spells doom for Butler as much as the comet spells doom for Earth.
