Review | Film review: Geostorm – Gerard Butler fights climate change in contrived sci-fi action epic
After a year of extreme weather events, what should have been a well acted, timely cautionary tale about climate change somehow fails to hit home, let down by a clumsy and contrived plot
2.5/5 stars
There’s an early scene in Geostorm where Hong Kong actor Daniel Wu Yin-cho, playing one of several dozen satellite experts in the film, steps out of an air-conditioned 7-Eleven onto Sai Yeung Choi Street in Mong Kok and immediately begins sweating profusely from the heat. The camera lingers on a single bead of sweat running down the side of his face – a filmmaking technique meant to hint that something is wrong.
But that’s perhaps also why this film is so timely. Anomalous weather likely caused by climate change, ranging from unusually hot autumn months to catastrophic hurricanes and typhoons, has become more frequent in the real world, yet many across the globe, including recycling-averse Hongkongers and the current US President, still refuse to take it seriously.
Geostorm star Gerard Butler on the epic disaster film’s ill-timed release, and his own near brushes with historically traumatic events
In Geostorm, Gerard Butler plays American rocket scientist Jake Lawson, who, we’re told in a weird opening voice-over, is the “one man” who ended global warming by designing and building an elaborate satellite system to control earth’s atmosphere – yes, climate change is solved in the first five minutes of the film by Butler.