Dean Devlin’s Geostorm is a film that makes you think—one that leaves burning questions viewers are left to ruminate as they walk out of the cinema when the credits roll. Of them all, one stands out, almost as a linchpin of every exasperated subset that follows:
Why?
For within the very first minute—nay, the very first frame—Geostorm fervently pushes viewers to question everything. Between their commute to the movies to their decision to watch the disaster unfold before their unsuspecting eyes, there is a vast ground of existential questions its audience might uncover, and be left to their own devices answering.
Borrowing heavily from the stylistic tendencies of such ‘auteurs’ as his mentor Roland Emmerich (Independence Day: Resurgence), and explosive Michael Bay (13 Hours), Dean Devlin goes right for the kill when it comes to cinematic subversion. His is the road few filmmakers would want to take; Bay and Emmerich included. For if everyone and their dearest grandmother took the long and winding road of having an identity that defined them, how different would they be from any other passionate creator trying to make their mark?
Not the stylistic tendencies of our man of the hour Devlin though, no.
You see, his is the kind that is devoid of any identity—the most subversive you can be, in the humble opinion of this poorly writer who has only just been subject to this shapeshifting wonder. That is not where he stops though. Move away, Fincher. Your attempts to entrance viewers with hyper-responsive camerawork is no match for Devlin’s fervent hyper-cutting between scenes and set-pieces that serve absolutely no link to each other.
The only way to give it the due respect it deserves would be by not turning up for it.
However, what is most spectacular about this film is the CGI. In this too, the director does an absolute 180, giving us something never seen before on the big-screen: Asylum-level effects work. Watching something as fascinating as Geostorm makes us mere mortals wonder if we have become so prone to seeing perfection onscreen that we cannot accept something as lazily composited as the many worked-on frames of the film.
Moreover, there are the performances. Never has a cast this talented—between Abbie Cornish (Limitless), Andy Garcia, (Passengers) and Ed Harris (Westworld), there’s much top-billing talent out here—taken a hard left by squeezing out every drop of sincerity and emotional connect from every pore of their bodies to give the audience a performance so incredibly lifeless, that zombies now have some healthy competition. Gerard Butler and Jim Sturgess, however, are the ones who have the potential to render viewers speechless. Between Butler’s lackluster performances in 300 and Law Abiding Citizen are now a thing of the past, for, in this film, he chooses to do—hold your breath, dear reader—nothing. Nothing. Ditto for Sturgess, who matches Butler step-for-step.
Geostorm is a film so exasperatingly singular; it deserves a treatment as subversive from the potential audience as the experience it provides them. The only way to give it the due respect it deserves would be by not turning up for it—not now, not ever, and not if you are given a million dollars. Sure, you could be like any other viewer and watch the film, like you have viewed countless other movies. However, an experience as unique as this deserves an equally straight-outta-leftfield reciprocation.
It’s the only way, fellas.
