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COVID-19 Special: 'Greenland' (15)


Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roger Dale Floyd

Where can I watch?: Greenland is streaming on Prime Video

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: Watching the news at the moment, it can often feel that we're living through our very own disaster movie, so sitting down to watch an 'end of the world' film may feel a little... Unnecessary? Fear not, readers, for I can assure you that watching doom unfurl via the medium of film is far more entertaining than living through it... Cue Greenland, a cataclysmic, comet-related outing that successfully thrills and engages without adding anything to the genre. You know the story already - an estranged husband (Gerard Butler, Scottish in some scenes, not in others) and wife (Morena Baccarin) must put their martial issues aside to ensure they, and their diabetic son (Roger Dale Floyd), survive the apocalypse, rekindling their relationship along the way. Despite this wholly unoriginal premise and a healthy collection of classic disaster movie tropes (planes exploding, people looting shops, accidental murders and a host of redemptive montages), Greenland still managed to get my pulse racing. A tense, dread-inducing primary section of the film acts as an excellent gateway to the subsequent explosions that follow shortly after, while some of the human interactions raise this particular film slightly above the usual standard for the genre, making it an entertaining way to pass an evening as we live through our own entry in the disaster catalogue.

A COVID-19 Must-Watch?: Make no mistake - Greenland is hardly a deep, cerebral thriller that'll leave you pondering the meaning of life, the universe and humanity's place in it. However, for all the classic tropes and Gerard Butler's wavering accent, this is pretty entertaining popcorn experience that'll get your heart pounding once or twice. 

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