Rent Geostorm on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Dean Devlin & Paul Guyot
Directed by: Dean Devlin
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Danuel Wu, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Robert Sheehan, Richard Schiff, Mare Winningham, Zazie Beetz
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer
Plot
When the network of satellites designed to control the global climate starts to attack Earth, it's a race against the clock for its creator to uncover the real threat before a worldwide Geostorm wipes out everything and everyone.
Verdict
It's completely mindless, built on explosions and random destruction with common tropes arranged to look like a story. Character motivations are flimsy, and there's plenty of events and actions in the movie just to add drama and fill run time without a solid foundation. I could ignore the lack of science if everything else wasn't so silly, but this reaches a point where picking apart the science is the only interesting thing.
Skip it.
Review
I knew going in this wasn't considered a good movie, but would it be fun anyway? I thought I had already seen it, confusing it with the other silly disaster movie The Hurricane Heist.
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| Alexandra Maria Lara and Gerard Butler play Ute Fassbinder and Jake Lawson |
Climate change is destroying the world and the only person that can stop it is a protagonist with authority figure issues. This starts with Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) mouthing off to a member of Congress at a hearing. Jake is then shocked when he gets fired from his job of building a space station for weather controlling satellites. I immediately thought these satellites seem like a weapon designed by a villain built on world domination. We'll get back to that later.
As bad as I'd heard this movie is, it's got a lot of stars. I can't figure out why they're in this movie. Many of them have been in decent movies recently.
Something nefarious occurs on the planet and at the space station. Someone is using the satellites for destruction. It seems like mindless terrorism, and it is. AFter knowing the villain and the plan, these scenes of destruction are just filler. There's no reason for it to occur other than visual flair and fill the run time.
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| Zazie Beetz, Jim Sturgess, Gerard Butler play Dana, Max Lawson, Jake Lawson |
After getting fired from building a space station Jake builds electric cars. He has a daughter just for the emotional manipulation for when returns to space. Jake is mad at his brother Max (Jim Sturgess) because the writer wanted to add tension and that was an easy way to do it.
The weather controlling satellites are causing destruction. It's chalked up to a glitch, but it really seems like a world domination scheme. I wasn't sure who had the power to do that or what the end game would be. What's the point of this destruction? For the movie at large it's just explosions to entertain, but for the characters, there's no basis. This is a megalomaniac villain plot line. I'm not even going to address how these satellites works. It's enough that they do, but it's easy to pile on and pick apart the science with how shallow this movie is. At one point there's a gun on the space station, I don't buy for a second that gun had any chance of being smuggled aboard. It's only on there so a bad character can do something stupid by shooting a hole in the space station.
This movie's last act is pointless chaos. We see quick clips of destruction, explosions, and countdown timers. It's just silly. I can ignore the lack of science, but everything else is so ridiculous. The villain's delusions of grandeur are comical. That character also happens to carry around a rocket launcher in their car trunk. This movie is written to get from one explosion to the next. The logic is completely lacking. This story is built on cliches and emotional manipulation, and that makes this very boring as it just continues to drag. Who cares? This is mindless in every sense.
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