Directed by: Ric Roman Waugh
Written by: Mitchell LaFortune and Chris Sparling
Starring: Gerald Butler, Morena Baccarin, and Roman Griffin Davis
Runtime: 98 minutes
‘Greenland 2: Migration’: Butler and Baccarin are an appealing on-screen couple, but it’s difficult to buy the story
“You gotta be kidding me.” – John Garrity (Gerald Butler)
When watching “Greenland 2: Migration”, the 2025 sequel to the 2020 disaster-adventure, “Greenland”, one might share John’s sentiment.
Well, in the first film, a catastrophic comet named Clarke strikes the planet, and billions attempt to run to safety, including John, his wife, Allison (Morena Baccarin), and their son, Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd).
The Garrity family thankfully finds refuge in a Greenland bunker, and in this sequel, life picks up five years after the first movie, as they, and an undetermined number of others, make the best of their lives in their below-ground concrete home (that sports yoga classes and 80s music), dreaming of eventually living in the Earth’s natural environment.
Unfortunately, elevated radiation on the surface persists as a deadly obstruction, but it doesn’t stop folks like John, who don gas masks and sometimes venture outside to gather needed supplies, tools, or darling remnants of life B.C. (Before Clarke), like a flower sandwiched in between pages of a pocket-sized journal.
As one might expect, the Garritys don’t enjoy a safe existence underground for long because an intimidating, angry fissure soon disrupts their best-laid plans, and John, Allison, Nathan (played by Roman Griffin Davis in the sequel), and a handful of fortunate others escape the earthquake and head southeast towards the UK and Continental Europe.
Director Ric Roman Waugh, who directed the first film, sends this likable, supportive family on a perilous journey. The triad hopes to find the actual Clarke crater located in France. It is rumored to support plant, animal, and human life, rather than be the radioactive wasteland that much of the world has become.
Disaster movies can – sometimes - be a cinematic radioactive wasteland as well, but that isn’t “Greenland 2: Migration” fate. Still, the film is often a frustrating experience. Writers Chris Sparling (who wrote the first movie’s screenplay) and Mitchell LaFortune pen an impossible journey for this nuclear family. They repeatedly conjure unworkable circumstances but make them work out almost perfectly for the Garritys through sheer incredible luck or beyond generous goodwill during a 3,000-mile expedition by boat, vehicle, or on foot.
As YouTuber Ryan George often says during his hilarious Pitch Meetings, “It was super easy, barely an inconvenience.”
For instance, their boat lands in a flooded Liverpool, England, but they, somehow, find their way to an old friend, Mackenzie (Sophie Thompson), who runs a London hospital, and she gladly hands them keys to an Audi SUV and doesn’t ask for a return date.
Sure, please take my car in the middle of a post-apocalyptic event where natural resources and supplies are almost as scarce as snowfall in Singapore.
Later, they encounter a middle-aged man with a gun who shoots first and asks questions later, but the stranger extends instantaneous trust to our lead family and invites them to a home-cooked meal.
They stumble into other sticky situations with unfriendly outsiders and face a hazardous environment, complete with sudden electrical storms and a treacherous walking bridge, one inexplicably built like a tightrope instead of a proper collection of planks.
Since “Migration” is an action-adventure film, Waugh, Sparling, and LaFortune bombard John, Allison, and Nathan with loads of dire confrontations to navigate around or through. With a runtime of just 98 minutes, the collection of recurrent daring escapes and astounding acts of charity becomes a constant, ever-frequent beat of absurd good fortune.
The Garritys, mind you, are a suburban family choosing this excursion, not a regiment from the British Army, French Foreign Legion, or U.S. Marines.
No worries, the screenplay says that they got this.
On the other hand, the script, Baccarin, and Butler play to their characters’ domestic strengths, as the movie pauses at times and offers pleasant moments of good cheer, like a Jackson Browne tune, a couple of proper meals, and strong emotional support. Baccarin and long-time action star Butler are also entirely convincing at conveying trauma, and we easily believe John and Allison love one another and are in for the long game, if they can survive.
Then again, the family also stops for a breather during the third act and plays a game of “Would you rather read minds or be invisible?”
Sigh. Could you read this critic’s mind at that moment?
The film’s location team dreamt up a realistic wasteland environment, as the crew filmed on eerie, barren Icelandic landscapes, and the CGI looked respectable, as well as a practical effects scene during a getaway at the beach.
The makeup department also performed admirably by causing Butler’s John to look increasingly worse with each passing second – due to a specific plot point - over the 98 onscreen minutes while inversely fashioning Baccarin’s Allison more beautiful over the same timeline. Objectively, this really seems to happen, and look, that’s not a stretch.
However, this story is…over a few thousand miles.
Jeff’s ranking
2/4 stars
