Butler makes predictable return in ‘Greenland 2: Migration’

Gerard Butler is the Prince of January. You could print calendars now with the knowledge that the Scottish actor will invariably open the year with some kind of action bombast, ranging from the goofy (last year’s “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera”) to the earnest — this year’s disaster movie sequel “Greenland 2: Migration.” Butler reunites with his “Kandahar,” “Angel Has Fallen” and “Greenland” director Ric Roman Waugh for the film, and much like “Den of Thieves 2,” the film sees our star setting out for the south of France, under, of course, very different circumstances.

In the surprisingly effective 2020 film “Greenland,” Butler’s John Garrity and family just barely survive a comet named Clarke, which destroys 75% of the planet on impact. Five years later, when “Greenland 2: Migration” takes place, they’re living in a nuclear fallout bunker in Greenland, sheltering from radioactive storms with a group of survivors. This little society has to make a choice: stay put in a relatively safe but increasingly untenable place, or make a move for (possibly) greener pastures. Those potential pastures are in Clarke’s impact crater, where a scientist, Dr. Casey Amina (Amber Rose Revah), believes that new life may have sprung, shielded from the toxic air.

That decision is made for them when the bunker is destroyed by earthquakes, and the Garrity family escapes across the Atlantic with a small group of survivors. They alight in a waterlogged Liverpool, and discover the broken social factions that have cropped up in the wake of environmental collapse. From there, John and his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) and teenage son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis) make their way to London, then Dover, and then France, in search of Clarke’s landing spot.

Their journey takes them from destinations that are comfortingly homey (a barricaded memory care home in London), outlandish (traversing a dry English Channel via ladder), and even weirdly historical (trench warfare has returned in France). Waugh’s location shooting in the U.K. and Iceland makes for some stunning landscape imagery, and keeps the world grounded in reality — for the most part — as he did with “Greenland,” previously. The only difference is that Butler fades to the background, oddly, with Baccarin, Davis and the rotating cast of people they meet on the way drawing focus.

There is an interesting comparison to make with “Greenland 2: Migration,” to Danny Boyle’s 2025 zombie sequel “28 Years Later.” Both feature stories about fathers and young teen sons venturing to the U.K. from an island enclave years after disaster, but Boyle (and writer Alex Garland) are willing to get freaky with it, while Waugh and writers Mitchell LaFortune and Chris Sparling walk a very predictable and straightforward path.

While we get a glimpse of the Liverpool lunatics roaming the streets, as well as faceless marauders and insurgents that make outside even more dangerous than the radioactive air, for the most part, the people the Garrity family encounter prove to be trustworthy. I kept expecting a twist, a rug pull, some spin on the material, or even a strange new life-form birthed by Clarke. I’m not sure why I thought that was an option, considering the first film. Everything proceeds exactly as one might expect.

That is in line with the film’s overall ethos. Butler’s John hopes for his son that he is able to rebuild a world based on kindness and compassion, and his vision of what the world could be is indeed reflected back at him. Conflict rages over resources, but people are, for the most part, decent.

But who gets to enjoy the spoils of the new world? The message that Waugh, LaFortune and Sparling impart is that those who dare to dream that it exists, who endure the journey to get there, rather than clinging to tenuous safety, are the ones who have earned the prize of new life and the abundance that comes with it. “Greenland 2: Migration” offers up a proudly, even defiantly, optimistic view of what comes after disaster, which can serve for the viewer as either cathartic fictional balm, or Pollyanna-ish fantasy — pick your poison.

Tribune News Service