This Gerard Butler flick is perfect for disaster movie fans who loved “Armageddon” but thought the acting was too high-brow.
It’s the last thing I should be saying in 2017. But after seeing “Geostorm,” I was left wanting more high-octane weather.
There’s no doubt the Gerard Butler-helmed disaster flick is arriving in cinemas at an inopportune time: Devastating storms and hurricanes have battered the US and Central America this year. A film about monster storms? That hits a little close to home.
But “Geostorm” continues a rich tradition of disaster films — titles like “The Day after Tomorrow,” “2012” and “Sharknado” that all deliver on the premise reiterated in this film’s opening line: “Everyone was warned, but no one listened.”
Scientists versus government! Saving humanity versus saving money! Killer clouds versus frozen deserts! Bring it on.
It’s the near future, and the climate is in chaos. Earth has been hit with a series of apocalyptic weather events, so an international team of scientists, led by Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler), bands together to build “Dutch Boy” — a global network of geosynchronous satellites that prevents storms by… something something lasers?
As the movie’s tagline goes, “Control the weather, control the world,” and that’s exactly what Dutch Boy does; without it, individual storms could build into an unstoppable global weather event known as a Geostorm. The US is about to put control of Dutch Boy in international hands, and Jake’s brother Max (Jim Sturgess) is brought on to handle the transition. But there are signs of shady government bureaucracy, and when the weather starts to go wrong, we realize Dutch Boy could be turned against us.
Like any good disaster movie, “Geostorm” isn’t strong on believable science. It also doesn’t dwell on the man-made element of climate change. In fact, humankind has declined to rein in its profligate consumption and heavy reliance on fossil fuels in favor of building an expansive space program, a massive, fourth-generation International Climate Space Station and good ol’ Skynet (sorry, “Dutch Boy”).