It’s the end of the world, still, as we pick up with the Garrity family not long after the events of “Greenland.” Gerard Butler is back as John, exploring the wasteland outside the Greenland bunker, while Morena Baccarin’s Allison remains inside, holding meetings about dwindling resources with the makeshift government. We get introduced to their now teenage son, trying to figure out how to have a life inside the bunker, when all hell breaks loose again, and everyone’s back on the run for survival.
What follows is a plot built around successive edge-of-your-seat set pieces with tender character moments interspersed along the way. Some of the sequences land better than others, while some of the effects might take you out of the so-called reality. The bigger issue of the film is that there are major plot turns of convenience, where luck just happens to favor the family we follow, seemingly at random. It’s hard to swallow this in drama, one of the old rules of screenwriting being that bad luck is easy for an audience to buy, but good luck? Not so fast.
There are moments where the Garritys are in groups with other survivors, but then those others vanish, not always in clear on-screen manners. There are many shots of crazy, chaotic crowds of extras taking on an almost mindless zombie-like mania, just as there are scenes of a city underwater transitioning smoothly to one above ground and seemingly comfortably occupied by humans. The changes in the quality and safety of the air are at times explained or tracked, and then at other times ignored entirely. There are characters who have found some form of safety that seems comfortable in landscapes we are led to believe are not safe at all. There are war zones where who is fighting and over what is never explained clearly enough.
This is all to say that “Greenland: Migration” has some issues with clarity.
Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin Manage To Deliver
Despite the issues with the plot and a few overly familiar tropes (John has one of those movie coughs that can only mean one thing), Butler and Baccarin deliver real on-screen chemistry and a few genuinely tender moments. Butler is one of those actors who can remain compelling on screen, regardless of the subject matter. There is an honest dignity in his performances and his expressions that makes him eternally sympathetic. You’ll believe that he and Baccarin love each other, and that they believe in the stakes and the mission, no matter how objectively absurd it is. Don’t step back and think too long about that, just enjoy the actor’s attempt to ground the proceedings in humanity and love.
There are some potentially meaningful takeaways from the film’s tendency to repeatedly rescue characters through good fortune and the kindness of others. Perhaps the suggestion is that the only way through things that feel apocalyptic is the kindness of strangers and a connection to our common humanity. This may not be enough to muscle the film past its strained premise and precarious plot turns. Too many of these events feel convenient in the wrong way, and happen too fast for us to really wrap our minds around how or why.
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