Film Review - Geostorm (2017)

Geostorm is directed by Dean Devlin who worked with Roland Emmerich on Independence Day and Stargate among other films and tells the tale of an Earth ravaged by extreme weather so the worlds scientists devise a satellite system called Dutch Boy to contain them but when the head of the project named Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) is fired from it 3 years later Dutch Boy begins to fail so Jake is recalled to action to get it working again.

Geostorm is a fun disaster film that really works because of two things:

- First is its disaster visual effects almost all of which are pretty cool with giant waves, tornadoes, lightning storms that look like mighty Thor is dropping for a visit, high winds, heavy hailstones all of which cause mass destruction across the world and had me going “This is so cool ha haha” and also making me think of Apocalypse from the X-Men and his quotes like “From the Ashes of their World we’ll build a better one” and “You can fire your arrows from the Tower of Babel but you can NEVER STRIKE GOOOOODDD” and “Nothing can stop the Apocalypse.”

- Secondly the cast know what their in for and have fun for the most part Butler does his usual thing of being the macho hero who helps save the day, Abbie Cornish has a good role as a secret service agent and Andy Garcia and Ed Harris are fun as well as US Presidential people who might hold the key to the project.

Alas however the films story is sadly pretty forgettable concerning government espionage, a conspiracy of power and what ends up becoming just another techno thriller where take phone calls and then are dead the next day to cover the tracks and other stuff has to be done to crack the code and save the day and after a while I got a bit bored of it.

And I couldn’t help but think that if Emmerich had directed this film instead of wasting his and our time on an utterly pointless and boring Independence Day sequel this could have been a fun companion to his underrated Day After Tomorrow but alas we got what we got.

And so that was Geostorm a fun if forgettable disaster film, 2 out of 5.