With most people back in their main roles, both in front of and behind the camera, Greenland 2: Migration is an unexpected sequel to Greenland, obviously. Considering that film was about an Extinction Level Event (ELE), you would suspect that the story was all done. Not so. There may be some hope for those who found a way to survive. Especially if you're the Garrity family (made up of Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, and Roman Griffin Davis, the latter replacing Roger Dale Floyd as the youngest family member).
It is five years after the events of the first movie. A number of people are living in an underground bunker, but more trouble is coming. The environment is still harsh and dangerous, which forces people to come up with a plan to move. There's rumour of a habitable environment at a major comet impact point, but getting there will be a hell of a challenge. Your odds seem greatly improved when Gerard Butler is the head of your family unit though.
Mitchell LaFortune joins Chris Sparling on the writing duties this time, and the two of them have a fairly easy task. Remind viewers of the current situation, put the latest events in motion, take characters on a journey that keeps putting a number of obstacles in between them and the potential safety and optimism of their final destination.
Director Ric Roman Waugh feels very much at ease with his job. He knows what needs to be done, and he keeps most of the scenes focused on the star, Butler. It's a shame that he doesn't do much else though, with the experience of watching this movie akin to the trudgery that the onscreen characters go through. You could argue that nothing in the rest of the movie is as intense or entertaining as the opening scenes, and that makes the 98-minute runtime drag out as it becomes a case of waiting for what seems like an inevitable finale.
Butler does fine in his role, once again being enjoyably stoic and a very capable, if reluctant, hero. Baccarin gets less to do, but remains alongside him in a pretty thankless role. Davis has one or two moments that show him struggling to stay adjusted to post-comet life, but it feels like lip service to something that would surely be much more intense and difficult to process. There are a few other characters allowed to pop in and out of the narrative, but things stay pretty firmly held on the fate of the central family unit.
If you liked the first movie then you'll find some moments to enjoy here, but it's a big step down. There's no real sense of urgency, aside from the moments in the first act, and it's hard to feel truly worried about people we last saw surviving "the end of the world". Fingers crossed that we don't get a third movie, although that would probably involve a war for Greenland between the people living there and the inane 47th President of The United States.
5/10
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