‘Actually, my brother and I were born in the UK,’ drawls Gerard Butler in this disaster thriller, as if to explain away any accent wobbles from him and onscreen sibling Jim Sturgess. Now in the USA, Jake (Butler) is a satellite designer, while Max (Sturgess) works at the White House, where his job mostly seems to involve asking what the hell is going on a lot.
It’s a fair question, too. After a series of calamities around the globe, Jake and team have designed a space station to control the weather. Suddenly – and surely to no-one's great surprise – it’s malfunctioning dangerously, so Jake goes back up to fix it, sniffs out a conspiracy and tells Max to sort it out on Earth while the Geostorm countdown clock is ticking.
Saddled with dodgy dialogue, Butler and Sturgess rarely convince, while Andy Garcia and Ed Harris are barely stretched as the President and Secretary of State. More peripheral characters are permitted to have fun: Zazie Beetz brings comic relief as a sardonic tecchy Dana, while Abbie Cornish gets to go full Jack Bauer as a character Dana dismissively calls ‘Secret Service Barbie’.
All in all, it’s a watery blend of ‘Armageddon’ and '24’ with enough action to entertain on a basic level. But it’ll probably be most appealing to scientists looking for a good laugh.