Review: Geostorm

Did anyone think Geostorm was actually going to be any good? The latest disaster yawn - pardon me, yarn - is the kind of decreasingly satisfying action ridiculousness with which beefy bulldog Gerard Butler has been synonymous in recent years. It's not so much half-hearted as half-quarter-hearted, and it makes one appreciate the comparatively well-crafted likes of Armageddon and The Day After Tomorrow.

This debut from director Dean Devlin, best known for co-writing and co-producing Stargate and Independence Day, lacks any sort of inventiveness or excitement and, if one is looking for a semblance of logic, best to search elsewhere. Predictability is the name of its game, and it dutifully goes through all the tropes of its genre: a series of catastrophic failures, people looking at monitors, disposable extras running in vain from the latest calamity, adorable animals and children in harm's way, and sequences slopped with CGI. One supposes the actors deserve a smattering of applause for managing to inject some urgency and incredulity into this claptrap.

Butler stars as Jake Butler, the maverick inventor of the "Dutch Boy," a network of climate-controlling satellites which saved the world from ecological doom. His allergy to protocol got him fired and replaced with baby brother Max (Jim Sturgess). Three years later, the hotheaded Jake is tasked by the President (Andy Garcia) to return to the international space station so he can reboot the Dutch Boy program and figure out what's going on after one or more of the satellites malfunctions, resulting in an Afghan village freezing over and part of Hong Kong collapsing after gas lines burst open. Unsurprisingly, Jake and Max discover that the disasters may not be random accidents, but deliberate attacks are possibly being masterminded by someone very high up in the government. Could it be the Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom (Ed Harris)? Might it even be the President himself since the U.S. is about to surrender control of Dutch Boy to the United Nations?

Honestly, it's difficult to muster any sort of interest since the majority of the characters are so inane and idiotic. Most egregious of all is Abbie Cornish's Sarah, a Secret Service Agent who sheds her ethics every time fiancee Max asks her to perform something illegal. At least it gives Cornish another note to play apart from bland. The only actor who sparks notice is Zazie Beetz as a cybersecurity expert - she lends an energetically wry presence to the otherwise generic proceedings. Obviously, actors and a coherent narrative are secondary to the mayhem, which are tepidly thrilling at best and don't occur until the last 45 minutes of the film.

Geostorm

Directed by: Dean Devlin

Written by: Dean Devlin, Paul Guyot

Starring: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Amr Waked, Adepero Oduye, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Mare Winningham, Richard Schiff, Robert Sheehan, Zazie Beetz