Greenland (2020)

 

When a new asteroid - dubbed "Clarke" - is detected within the solar system, most people don't pay it all that much attention.  Certainly structural engineer John Garrity has more important things on his mind: repairing his fractured marriage and ending his current separation from his wife and child.

Even when it becomes clear that some debris from Clarke will strike our planet, there is little alarm.  Projections indicate these small chunks will land harmlessly in the ocean.

One day someone might make a movie where the space rock doesn't threaten the planet and is just background to some personal drama, but as you may have already guessed, this is not that movie.  The 'harmless' chunk is much bigger than expected and lands not in the ocean but in Tampa, all but annihilating Florida in the process.

As it becomes more and more clear that Clarke is about the scour the Earth like an interplanetary shotgun blast, and panic rises as people realise that this will claim billions of lives, the Garrity family are offered a lifeline. John's profession has seen them selected for transfer to an underground facility in Greenland, where the US government hopes to gather enough people with the necessary skills to rebuild society once the danger is passed.

Of course, getting to safety is going to be easier said than done ...

"Big space rock smashes the Earth" has been a recurring scenario in films dating back at least 70 years (When Worlds Collide in 1951), and was the subject of two very different major releases in 1998.  That year, Deep Impact took a relatively downbeat and sober approach to the scenario, while Armageddon was a gonzo action romp that saw the world's hopes rest on a bunch of oil rig workers equipped with nukes and an Aerosmith power ballad.

Greenland hews much closer in tone to Deep Impact, with the Garrity family facing a difficult journey to try and reach safety as the authorities swing clumsily into action and the wider population sinks into panic. 

This film profits from a strong core cast who deliver good performances.  The desperation and regrets of the Garrity family feel real, and definitely help with the film's emotional weight.

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about the film's narrative.  I thought the plans for the Greenland 'ark' seem poorly conceived and very poorly executed, obviously designed by the screenwriters to bring about maximum in-story drama rather than being an actual coherent plan to save people.  I sincerely hope that after decades of staring at nuclear devastation, the real US government has something a bit more refined in place to deal with the concept of relatively imminent annihilation.

That said, I've seen plenty of projects with far lower stakes that careered out of control due to poor planning and execution, so maybe the real thing would be this kind of shemozzle!

On the plus side for the script, I liked that it didn't just have the imminent disaster turn everyone into sociopaths.  Sure, the Garrity family runs into jerks during their efforts to survive, but they also meet plenty of ordinary people working together and helping each other however that can, whether that be in seeking survival or just coming to terms with impending death.  Too often media just assumes that co-operation goes out of the window in disasters, whereas the real life evidence shows that the reverse is often true.

If you're in the mood for a well-executed and disaster film that isn't just about the destructive spectacle, consider visiting Greenland.