Greenland 2: Migration


The best parts of the first “Greenland” (2020)” film is that this is an asteroid movie that has a realistic perspective about what would happen in the case when an asteroid is too big there would be nothing humanity could ever do to stop it from hitting the earth. An asteroid too huge to stop would erase either the entire population of the planet or a large percentage of it either because of the heat blast after impact or the radiation that would follow. All humanity can do to continue is to select a group of people who might be able to bring humanity back from intinction by protecting them in deep caves, in locations like Greenland, which is essentially the plot of the first movie.

The sequel to Greenland is “Greenland 2 Migration”, and once again stars Gerard Butler and, and Morena Baccarin as John and Allison Garrity along with their son Nathan now five years older played by Roman Griffin Davis. This version of a destroyed planet earth is about as pessimistic as the first movie, with the air loaded with radiation, tectonic shifts in the earths crust, huge electrical storms, criminal marauders robbing and killing people, along with human beings spending 5 years in very close quarters, slowly running out of food and supplies.

The problem with this sequel is that it violates a fundamental rule of screenwriting. In order for a story to make sense the characters have to do things that not only make sense but are what a real person would do – especially in the case where John Garrity is constantly in charge of trying to rescue his family from certain death.

Early in this story there is talk of relatively good odds that the impact crater made by the comet Clarke has started to create new life. After the caves in Greenland are no longer habitable, the Garrity family makes a trek across Greenland to make their way to the Clarke crater, largely based on second hand rumor and speculation. In real life people would not risk their lives so many times based on this level of remote speculation. The good news is that there is a strong possibility that this will be the last Greenland movie, which is a shame because it means another possible movie franchise is once again lost, all because a good enough story idea was not created before making this below average B-level film.

This time around the Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 53% are correct based on the obvious logistical and human decisions that are too flawed, making this movie impossible to recommend.

Movie Review: Den of Thieves: Pantera


The new movie “Den of Thieves: Pantera” is a sequel to “Den of Thieves,” released in January 2018, during the ‘January effect” period when bad or low-rated movies are released. I find it interesting that a low-grossing (80 million) movie released seven years ago would get enough production support to convince anyone that there should be a sequel. The first movie was average at best and was considered a run-of-the-mill action movie at the time.

The new film once again stars Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. as the only returning characters for the new movie, which does go in new directions. The problem with caper movies like this one is that almost all of them require so much setup to fill in the audience on what will happen and how it will happen, that the story slows down with too much filler, which is the case with this movie – that has too many areas that are slow.

What does work is the friendship between Nick O’Brian and Donnie Wilson, played by Butler and Jackson. There is some story trickery at the end, that I thought worked well, and a car chase and gun shooting scene through the winding roads of a mountain that was very well filmed. Unfortunately, the end of this chase scene involved a completely illogical appearance of other criminals at the top of this mountain, when there was no way they could have been there. Continuity, and logic errors like this, especially in an action movie can not only ruin a scene but in some cases, the entire film.

It is interesting to see Gerard Butler who starred in the great film “Olympus Has Fallen”, released in 2013, trying to recreate that huge hit with another action movie as good or even better. So far, this has not happened, more evidence of how difficult it is to write and produce a highly rated box office hit in the movie industry.

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews for this film are a low 62% with my rating around 70% and a mild recommendation.

Movie Review: Kandahar


A different perspective to review the new movie “Kandahar” is to understand the hardships of the cast and crew of this movie – while filming this average story about the war in Afghanistan in Saudi Arabia. All of the scenes of this movie are in barren desert locations, under the hot sun and sand for months. One can only wonder how much the star of this film, Gerard Butler was paid to go through a long period of time living in tents in a hot desert. After reading the script, which is nothing special, and then considering so many months of a filming schedule, it is hard to understand why Butler took this role. There is almost no story here, just a series of events that we have all seen many times before.

The story of Kandahar is about a CIA operative, played by Butler who following a successful mission to blow up a nuclear facility is exposed as a spy in the second mission and is forced to leave the country. The rest of this movie is nothing more than a series of chase scenes, gunfire, and explosions, making this one of the most minimal war movies I have ever seen. As far as the cast, Butler is the only well-known actor in this film with most of the other actors taken from a local actors pool in Saudi Arabia.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Kandahar is a low and correct 46% that I agree with and do not recommend this film.