Geostorm

Any resemblance Geostorm has to reality appears completely accidental. In a disaster movie that makes Armageddon look like a NASA documentary, Gerard Butler stars as the talented but problematic creator of a system of climate-controlling satellites. Fired for having standards and speaking truth to power, Jake Lawson (Bulter) is recruited back into the program by the same estranged brother (Jim Sturgess) who fired him when things start to go wrong.

The first feature directed by Dean Devlin, best known for his work in television on shows like Leverage and The Librarians, attempts to throw a conspiracy plot, dragging in Abbie Cornish as a Secret Security agent and Andy Garcia as the President of the United States, on top of end of the world ticking clock countdown when Jake discovers the problem with the system was sabotage and not malfunction.

A box office flop failing to even make back the film's budget, Geostorm is a mess from beginning to end. For a disaster movie the film lacks any urgency, and its attempts to raise the stakes with its conspiracies only gets the forgettable characters stuck in unbelievable situations which somehow still lack the inherent silliness to ever make the film skate under the so-bad-it's-good category.

Devlin worked on several projects with director Roland Emmerich over the years including Independence Day and Stargate, but also the most despised Godzilla film ever made. The nuts and bolts are here for a lesser Emmerich film, including a handful of recognizable stars and the looming threat, but it looks like the directions to what was being built were missing leading to something unrecognizable being cobbled together. The result more closely resembles a straight-to-Redbox throwaway DVD rather than a major motion picture.

• Title: Geostorm
• IMDb: link