Geostorm | Film review - A disaster movie in more ways than one

Geostorm Gerard Butler Jim Sturgess Abbie Cornish

(Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Brave The Storm.

Would-be epic sci-fi action movie Geostorm puts the disaster into disaster movie, serving up iffy special effects and even iffier acting, a shockingly stupid plot and dialogue so cheesy it should come with pepperoni on top. Even less forgivably, the film short-changes viewers who’ve turned up to see extreme-weather calamities laying waste to various global cities.

Independence Day producer Dean Devlin, making his directing debut, does put the freeze on Rio de Janeiro, burn up Hong Kong and send a CG tsunami crashing over Abu Dhabi. But he devotes most of the movie to a dull conspiracy-thriller mystery in which brawny scientist/astronaut Gerard Butler, his bureaucrat kid brother (Jim Sturgess) and plucky secret service agent Abbie Cornish rush around in space and on the ground trying to find out who is causing Butler’s net of climate control satellites to go haywire.

Certificate 12A. Runtime 109 mins. Director Dean Devlin

Geostorm is available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Warner Bros.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOlYPSEzSc

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.