Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Geostorm Blu-ray Movie Review

Oceans Rise; Cities Fall; Movies Tank

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 22, 2018

The title of this review comes from the tagline for Deep Impact, one of the many better disaster movies that Geostorm invokes (or rips off, if we're being honest). The film is the directorial debut of Dean Devlin, who knows his way around the cinema of mass destruction from writing and producing projects like Independence Day and the 1998 "size does matter" reboot of Godzilla. But Devlin seems to have forgotten whatever he once knew about creating characters who are more than two-dimensional cliches or giving them dialogue that's more than formulaic drivel. Geostorm has a capable cast, but all of them, even the reliable Ed Harris, sink under the weight of a script that sheds any pretense of either humanity or credibility. If you're going to ask viewers to suspend disbelief about science, economics and international relations, you'd better people your story with believable characters, and Geostorm doesn't have a single one.

Geostorm was a costly flop for Warner Brothers, with a production cost escalated by effects work and reshoots. The finished film sat on the shelf for over a year while the studio tried to find the least damaging release date, and it eventually hit theaters, including IMAX and 3D venues, on October 20, 2017, where it was beaten at the box office by Boo 2! A Madea Halloween. While unexpectedly robust overseas receipts helped fill in some of the financial hole the studio dug for itself, Warner is going to need all the ancillary revenue it can get to recoup its investment. I don't know how much video sales and rentals will help, because I suspect the film will come and go at home as quickly as it did in theaters.

Geostorm's script is credited to Devlin and TV writer/producer Paul Guyot (Leverage and The Librarians), with uncredited rewrites by Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island). It begins with the hoary device of a child's narration and immediately asks the viewer to accept two key premises. The first is that science has advanced to the point where it can control the weather with an orbiting network of satellites controlled from the International Space Station, a system that has been dubbed "Dutch Boy" after the kid who stuck his finger in a dyke. The second premise is that international conflicts have been resolved to the point where the world has united behind the construction of this costly project after a series of catastrophic events dwarfing the scale of Hurricanes Harvey and Maria. I find the latter notion much harder to swallow than the former, but I was willing to go with both of them, because you have to grant a popcorn movie some leeway.

But Geostorm keeps burdening the viewer's suspension of disbelief with one whopper after another. Start with the master builder of this technological marvel: a scientist, engineer and all-around genius named Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler), who, after he gets the thing up and running, is immediately fired because he's "difficult". And who is the person delegated to perform the dirty work of firing Jake? Why, it just happens to be his younger brother, Max (Jim Sturgess), thereby setting up a bitter sibling rivalry that will be conveniently resolved when the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. Max is also a special assistant to the Secretary of State (Ed Harris) with a seat at the counsel table of President Andrew Palma (Andy Garcia), although it's never clear what he actually does other than firing his cantankerous relation.

In an even bigger eye-roller, Jake Lawson's skills aren't immediately snapped up by some R&D division of a major corporation, leaving Dutch Boy's creator to sit on a farm in Northern Florida tinkering with old machines. Jake's disgrace doesn't sit well with his wife, who apparently expected a better life after waiting around for years while her husband built satellites in space, and she divorces him, thereby creating an estrangement between Jake and his bratty but predictably adorable daughter (Talitha Eliana Bateman).

Everything goes swimmingly with Dutch Boy for the next three years, and during that time brother Max becomes romantically involved with a beautiful Secret Service Agent (Abbie Cornish), whose security clearance will no doubt come in handy in the third act. (Geostorm is nothing if not paint-by-numbers.) But then Dutch Boy begins to malfunction, actively generating extreme weather events instead of preventing them. Naturally, anyone who comes close to figuring out how and why this is happening suffers a well-timed accident that prevents him from alerting the world. Geostorm even pulls out the hackneyed device of having one of the unfortunate messengers telephone a colleague with his dire discovery but not say anything, because this is too important to explain over the phone. The sucker insists on a meeting, which everyone in the audience knows he won't survive to attend. (This gimmick should be permanently banned from the screenwriters' handbook, along with estranged family members who have to reconcile to save the world and bratty but adorable offspring.)

Of course, the only person qualified to "fix" Dutch Boy is its creator, Jake, despite the fact that an international team of scientists, engineers and technicians led by Ute Fassbinder (Alexandra Maria Lara) has been running the thing successfully for years. Or have they? For a short while, Geostorm manages to sustain a faint pretense of mystery over whether Dutch Boy's malfunctions are the work of a global conspiracy hatched by a Bond-style super-villain or the interventions of a malevolent A.I. But the identity of who or what is directing Dutch Boy's destructive impulses quickly ceases to matter, as one global capital after another is destroyed and the catastrophes build toward a self-generating "geostorm" that will level much of the planet. Whatever sinister force is driving these events, the plan is ultimately self-defeating. When the dust settles, there won't be anything left over which he, she or it can rule. Even Moonraker's mad villain had a plan to repopulate the world after he exterminated humanity, and Terminator's Skynet was smart enough to leave the machines' essential infrastructure intact. Geostorm's evil scheme is designed for destruction rather than domination, and rationales be damned. (And yes, I realize the film eventually does offer a semblance of an explanation, but it's so laughable that even the wildest conspiracy theorist wouldn't buy it.)

Geostorm's effects teams have created some interesting tableaus of urban carnage, but we've seen it all before in CG disasters from Armageddon to San Andreas to the Transformers series (not to mention every film from Marvel and DC Comics). And Devlin's direction lets down the effects work, failing to build suspense and emptying every shot of energy. (Maybe he should have sought more advice from his former partner, Roland Emmerich, who at least knows how to frame his shots and move the camera effectively.) The pacing is atrocious, as Devlin repeatedly pauses the action to have characters deliver mouthfuls of exposition or engage in maudlin exchanges that are Geostorm's excuse for drama and emotion. The film doesn't even have the good taste to offer token respect to the massive loss of life it depicts. Deep Impact concluded with a presidential eulogy for the fallen, and Armageddon ended with a funeral for heros, but Geostorm's notion of uplift is limited to reuniting a missing dog with its owner.

Geostorm Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Geostorm was shot by the versatile Roberto Schaefer, who has done excellent work in both 16mm (Waiting for Guffman) and 35mm (Quantum of Solace) but in this instance employed digital photography (on Red, if IMDb is to be believed). Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features the usual virtues of digital capture and post-production, with superior sharpness and detail and an overall absence of noise, distortion or interference. Blacks are solid and deep—essential for scenes set in outer space—and the predominant palette skews toward the cool end of the spectrum, with multiple shades of blue, gray and white and, for contrast, an occasional scene dominated by warm tones, e.g., the beach in Rio where panicked vacationers try to outrun a freezing tsunami. The movie may be awful, but the presentation is capable, and Warner's theatrical division has hewed to its now-familiar practice of giving its worst films the best mastering, with an average bitrate of 29.89 Mbps.

Geostorm Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Geostorm's 5.1 soundtrack is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, and it offers all the volume and dynamic range that one would expect from a film depicting one climate disaster after another (and, for good measure, a few catastrophes in space). Winds and giant waves roar, lightning crackles, thunder peals, collapsing buildings rumble to the ground and explosions challenge the subwoofer. It's a bombastic track, but not a particularly subtle one, with scant attempt to create any sense of appropriate environmental ambiance in the film's quieter locales. The score by composer Lorne Balfe (Ghost in the Shell) does what it can to add a sense of danger and urgency, but music can only do so much. Dialogue is clear and well-prioritized.

Geostorm Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Wreaking Havoc (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:30): This featurette focuses on the film's combination of practical sets and CGI.



• The Search for Answers (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:13): A brief account of the film's genesis in a conversation between Dean Devlin and his young daughter.



• An International Cast (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:40): Assembling the U.N.-like collection of players who are responsible for operating and monitoring the Dutch Boy system (and also for enhancing the prospects of Geostorm's international box office).



• Introductory Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Ready Player One, Justice League VR: The Complete Experience and Fantastic Beasts Virtual Reality Experience.

Geostorm Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some posters at Blu-ray.com are already declaring Geostorm to be their new favorite bad movie. This Blu-ray rendition is a gift to such viewers, but for me (and, I suspect, for most) it's two wasted hours. Not recommended.