Director: Dean Devlin
Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Duration: 109 minutes
Geostorm (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Over a decade ago, we were quite interested in ‘end of the world’ scenarios by the hand of nature itself. These movies did their best and while some were major blockbusters, many were simply terrible to watch, safe for a brain-dead Friday night with a hefty amount of snacks and some friendly company. Nonetheless, with Geostorm it seems that the disaster movie scene is still very much alive, and it even tries to tackle an important topic, namely global warming, and how humanity is slowly, but surely, destroying our planet and seemingly doesn’t care for the generations that will come after the current ones. Well the latter isn’t completely true in the movie, as a very interesting solution has been created as a countermeasure for what is happening to our luscious blue Earth.
Our world was being pestered by fierce natural phenomena, such as hurricanes, tsunamis, rapid increases or declines in temperature, all creating massive casualties around the globe. Our planet was in the process of wiping out all human life from its surface, until a grand international project came to life under the leadership of Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler). Together with a team from “all” countries from the world, he created something that is called Dutch Boy in the common tongue, which in reality is a gigantic system of satellites orbiting the planet. These satellites aren’t normal ones, as they serve the purpose of destroying storms, keeping the temperatures in check and so on. Basically they can counter every problematic natural occurrence. The project itself was a success, but Jake would not be tempered by the US government, and thus he was tossed aside and the new head of the project was his very own brother Max (Jim Sturgess), who’s first task was to fire Jake.
Years went by and while the project was still a success, disaster struck in a small village in Afghanistan, where the locals just instantly froze to death, and Dutch Boy never picked up the occurrence. On top of that, an accident happened on the international space station, which resulted in a casualty under somewhat suspicious circumstances. Jake is then brought back and while he was hesitant at first, he soon finds himself back in space, trying to solve the situation. When another event takes place in Hong Kong, it becomes clear that foul play is in order, and it’s not only a race to fix Dutch Boy, but one to save the entire planet.
The flow of the movie is somewhat predictable, albeit pleasant enough for you to keep your attention until the credits start to roll. Nonetheless, fans of something with a lot of depth may find this movie outside of their genre, but then again, many disaster movies follow a fixed format. In this scenario the sabotage effect adds a bit of a difference compared to said older movies, but even then, the movie is still somewhat typical and you’ll know many of the events that unfold around the corner. If you keep in mind typecasting, then you’ll probably even know who the villain of the movie will be.
You’ll notice a lot of big actors in Geostorm, but it’s Gerard Butler that steals the show as the American hero that runs the Dutch Boy project, who was shamefully discharged only to be brought back as he is the only person who can fix what is going on. His brother is played by Jim Sturgess, who does a great job at that, but for some reason the age difference looks a bit unrealistic. Other familiar faces include Daniel Wu, Abbie Cornish, Amr Waked, Alexandra Maria Lara, and several others.
On the Blu-ray edition of Geostorm you’ll find around fifteen minutes of extra content, which are fairly enjoyable but don’t add that much value to the actual movie. You’ll see snippets that revolve around the effects used in the movie, the ‘what if’ concept and the idea of the entire world coming together to work on such a project such as Dutch Boy.
Conclusion
Geostorm is a fairly predictable movie that clearly falls into the disaster genre. While the movie may be predictable, it also has a fairly old school feeling about it like older movies such as Twister or The Day after Tomorrow, which certainly has its charm. If you’re into disaster movies, with a fairly strong cast supporting it, you’ll certainly enjoy this one for a single watch.
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