TV Obsessive
Gerard Butler Double Feature: Greenland and Den of Thieves
Paul: An underrated action star with gruffy masculinity, a volatile temper, and old-fashioned earnestness, Gerard Butler’s filmography is worthy of many double features. Here is my personal recommendation:
Start with Greenland, one of the better disaster flicks of the past few decades. This film succeeds by virtue of its simplicity. Instead of trying to subvert or upend or dissolve the genre in some cute and self-indulgent manner, it wholeheartedly embraces the genre’s pillar: the nuclear family. Butler plays John Garrity, an architect with an asthmatic son and an estranged wife. The Garritys are offered sanctuary in a remote bunker owned by the US government as a cataclysmic comet hurtles toward Earth, but the journey does not go smoothly.
The sudden apocalyptic scenario primarily serves as the catalyst for personal reckoning, redemption, and reconciliation. All fun and successful disaster blockbusters—from Twister to Independence Day to San Andreas to The Day After Tomorrow to Spielberg’s underrated War of the Worlds—understand this basic equation. But narrowing a plot’s focus onto the dynamics of a dysfunctional family is not always enough. The second must for a solid disaster flick is suspense. And here is where Greenland really succeeds—by offering nail-biting sequences in spades. As comets hurl into the earth, military aircrafts explore, looters shoot up supermarkets, and Gerard Butler fistfights strangers while hitchhiking to reunite with his asthmatic son and estranged wife, the exigency of the film never relents. Its corny, cliché stuff, but it is fun as hell to watch.
For the second feature, skip the obvious pairing of Greenland with Geostorm (a much inferior though not awful Butler disaster flick) and go with Den of Thieves. Modeled after great ’90s heist thrillers like The Usual Suspects and Heat, this Butler vehicle is the best imitation of Michael Mann’s signature brand of macho existentialism that you have probably never seen. In the film, Butler plays Nick O’Brien—an alcoholic L.A. Sheriff who leads the elite Regulators unit. When a gang of tactically savvy ex-military personnel known as the Outlaws decide to rob the Federal Reserve Bank, it is up to the Regulators to stop the heist. Equal parts thrilling and cleverly written, Christian Gudegast wrote and directed the hell out of this twist-heavy, machismo-laden flick. With a great supporting performance by O’Shea Jackson Jr. as Donnie Wilson, ’90s cinema’s great criminal masterminds, like Keyser Soze and Neil McCauley, would be proud of this solid homage.
