Geostorm

I remember watching the movie Deep Impact on television long back and it was my first experience of watching that kind of science fiction disaster film. The film blew my mind at that time and later I realized that there were a lot of other films including the very popular Armageddon from destruction man Michael Bay.  When I saw the new film Geostorm starring Gerard Butler, the main disappointment was the fact that after nearly 20 years from the release of the above mentioned movies, Hollywood hasn’t evolved much in story telling except for the usage of visual effects.

Because of catastrophic climate conditions, every nation on glob decided to jointly build a satellite network above the earth called Dutch Boy to control the weather conditions. Jake Lawson is the man who built this mechanism and soon after the commissioning he was thrown out of the project. The movie tells us about the events that happen when the Dutch Boy starts to malfunction after three years in to its commissioning and how Jake and the team try to address this issue.

If this is your first experience of watching a science fiction disaster film, the movie might stay in your head. For others who have seen this kind of films, it’s a big chunk of clichés. The beats are very familiar. When Lawson starts to say the melodramatic goodbye speech by the end, I was in that “been there, seen that” kind of mood. The only improvement this movie has from the other films in the category is the special effects. To be honest Hollywood is in a state where the benchmarks of visual effects are pretty high and in my opinion the effects weren’t that great when compared to the works we have seen in recent past. The only time where I really laughed was for the cheeky moment where a Mexican saved an American and asked him to remember the flag.

The director of this film Dean Devlin has famously written movies like Independence Day and Godzilla for director Roland Emmerich who is like a veteran in making disaster films including the famous 2012. You can clearly see the Emmerich influence in Devlin’s making. From globalizing the plot to soaking it in cliché moments and embedding too much of catastrophe in visuals, Devlin repeats what Emmerich used to do. Hollywood’s perception of India hasn’t changed much and they still show only slums to represent us. Technical aspects of the film especially the visual effects are neat enough to make it look grand on screen. But the weak writing isn’t giving any support to the futuristic premise.

Like the way one character says in the film, Gerard Butler looks older and tired. I really couldn’t picture him as THE guy who saved the earth by making something like the Dutch boy. Jim Sturgess is just okay as Jake Lawson’s brother. Abbie Cornish is used more like a “hot” actress than an essential character. Annabelle Creation fame Talitha Bateman is there in the movie playing Lawson’s daughter and the character is like a surface level depiction of Murphy from interstellar. Alexandra Maria Lara is wasted in a pointless character.

Geostorm is a really uninspiring film that tries to be one in this league of films. But the lack of novelty and over dependency on visual effects makes this movie a boring film on the whole. It just doesn’t evoke interest at any point.

Rating: 2/5