Hollywood’s Fave Action Star Tackles Trump’s Next Takeover Target

Donald Trump may want to invade Greenland, but Gerard Butler’s heroic husband and father is intent on ditching it for, ahem, greener pastures in Greenland 2: Migration.

The film, which hits theaters Friday, Jan. 9, is a highly anticipated follow-up to the 2020 disaster film in which a civilization-annihilating comet instigated a race to the Denmark territory’s secure underground bunkers. This will undoubtedly make Ric Roman Waugh’s sequel far from a favorite of the commander-in-chief, who dreams of turning the country into a piece of his Western-hemisphere fiefdom.

Five years after the Clarke comet killed three-quarters of the global population and transformed Earth into a wasteland, structural engineer John Garrity (Butler) spends his days maintaining his bunker home’s water systems and venturing into the inhospitable outside to scavenge for supplies.

On one of those missions, John finds a collection of lifeboats run ashore as well as a derelict ocean tanker that houses vital goodies. Before he can get comfortable in his ghost-ship surroundings, however, John is forced to flee back to his subterranean residence by one of the regular radioactive storms—all cascading clouds and destructive lightning—that have turned the surface into a toxic no-go zone.

While John risks life and limb for his community, his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) sits on a governing council that is debating Greenland’s growing instability and the precious few options they have should they choose to move. Apparently, North America and Iceland are not viable locales, nor is most of Western Europe, although Dr. Casey Amina (Amber Rose Revah) is of the opinion that the comet may have created a crater in France that—due to high mountain walls that shield its center from the atmosphere’s radiation—could be an idyllic area of renewed life.

Of more pressing concern, at least at first, is the appearance of migrants seeking shelter in the bunker, and Adam Shaw’s (Trond Fausa) belief that they should be denied entry. Allison disagrees and convinces her compatriots to help these individuals—an act which marks her as a benevolent soul who’s just as willing to risk everything for others as her spouse.

John and Allison’s son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis, replacing Roger Dale Floyd) is now 15 years old and captivated by the constellations he learns about in school. Despite disobeying his dad by sneaking outside to glance at the sky, he’s basically a generic afterthought, such that his need for insulin—a major factor in the first film—is almost wholly ignored in favor of different do-or-die interests.

Like its predecessor, Greenland 2: Migration has its characters racing against time. In this instance, however, the ticking clock doesn’t have to do with getting to transports (and sanctuary) before the you-know-what hits the fan, but rather is about John’s suspicious cough, whose first appearance is a red flag that his stoutness is a facade and all his outdoor excursions have done lasting damage to his health.

Before any final decision can be made about relocation, things go haywire, forcing John and company to abandon their environs, and Waugh stages his mayhem with requisite pulse-pounding muscularity.

For a film that’s focused on its subjects’ emotional plights (and consideration of others’ distress), it’s somewhat surprising that no one sheds a tear about actively consigning their fellow survivors to their doom. Still, Greenland 2: Migration is a reasonably empathetic post-apocalyptic melodrama which understands that creating likable characters is the key to generating suspense. It additionally grasps that, with an endeavor like this, surprise is essential, as illustrated by a shocking demise which underlines that, even if its protagonists aren’t apt to perish in the early going, death is an ever-present specter.

Waugh doesn’t overdo it with the sound and fury, instead striking a solid balance between moments of tranquility (and hope) and chaos and madness, the latter of which takes the form of not just weather but also various human antagonists, as John and his family learn upon crossing the English Channel—which, in an arresting discovery, has totally dried up—and reaching England.

That’s not the last stop on their odyssey, and Greenland 2: Migration keeps things lively by bombarding Butler’s paterfamilias with all manner of threats, be they from the sky or on the ground, and Waugh breaks up his action with vistas of twinkling nighttime stars, barren plains, and metropolises submerged beneath miles of water.

Eschewing the operatic bombast of Roland Emmerich’s modern disaster blockbusters (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow), the director provides an eye-level view of his bedlam, in the process keeping one invested in the minute-by-minute efforts of John, Allison, and Nathan to navigate perilous chasms and terrifying warzones on the way to France.

Given the material’s fascination with the End Times and rebirth, its portrayal of John as a quasi-Christ figure willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, and its characters’ quest to reach a potential Eden, there’s a distinct biblical quality to Greenland 2: Migration, and that’s true even before Butler’s dad teaches his son about the reasons for (and need to) pray for the dead.

These undercurrents, though, aren’t foregrounded to the point of interfering with the tale’s meat-and-potatoes pandemonium, which is most seriously hampered by a handful of developments that are too convenient considering the specific circumstances at hand. Especially in its back half, the film feels as if it’s coasting on rails rather than traversing bumpy, unpredictable terrain, culminating with the very feel-good finale it’s telegraphed from the outset.