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FEATURE: U.S. President Donald Trump has said time and time again that he doesn't believe climate change is real. Well, if Geostorm doesn't convince him otherwise, then nothing will. Like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, director Dean Devlin's feature debut is a disaster movie on a global scale. This time, it's a network of 1,270 thermospheric satellites that has malfunctioned, triggering extreme weather events around the planet, and the only person who can stop this meteorological apocalypse is Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler), the man who invented it. But while Jake boards the International Space Station to try and stop a massive geostorm from killing millions, his younger brother, Assistant Secretary Max Lawson (Jim Sturgess), and Max's Secret Service agent girlfriend, Sarah (Abbie Cornish), have their hands full back in Washington, as they try to get to the bottom of a government conspiracy that goes all the way up to the Commander in Chief's top staff. Aside from the obvious drama of seeing freakishly ginormous weather anomalies descend upon the unsuspecting populaces of some of the world's major cities, Devlin and his co-writer, Paul Guyot, try to wring drama from the relationship between Max and Jake, which has been on shaky ground ever since Max unceremoniously fired Jake from the project three years earlier. However, they're only moderately successful, and, ironically, such scenes only slow the momentum of what might otherwise be a guilty-pleasure thrill ride. As it stands, Geostorm starts off mildly grounded in reality, not unlike a big budget version of An Inconvenient Truth. However, it's not long until any and all plausibility is tossed out the window faster than an International Space Station technician can be sucked out of an open airlock. Beach-goers in Rio de Janeiro are frozen in a flash-freeze, a mega-tsunami wipes out Dubai, and bolts of lightning strike at Orlando traffic while our heroes swerve like maniacs to avoid being fried to a crisp. Meanwhile, all viewers can do is hold on for dear life.  Geostorm may not represent the pinnacle of fine cinema, but its visual presentation is top-notch. The tiniest piece of debris that gets jettisoned from the I.S.S. during the film's explosive climax is plainly identifiable, ocean blues and fiery reds are rich and robust, and Gerard Butler's stubble has never looked better. As for the audio, the disc's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix is justifiably bombastic, and will rattle viewers' living rooms appropriately with the sounds of thunder and lightning, tornadoes, explosions and general all-around chaos.  Warner's two-disc Blu-ray combo pack includes an UltraViolet digital copy, a DVD copy and the following Blu-ray extras:
Geostorm is available from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment as of January 23rd, 2018. The Blu-ray features English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French, Spanish and Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1, and English Dolby Digital 5.1 Descriptive Audio tracks. The film is presented with English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles. The total runtime is 1 hr. 49 min. |
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