Butler battles a comet to save his family in ‘Greenland’

Gerard Butler doesn’t shoot anyone in the head in the disaster thriller “Greenland” – which is either a good or a bad thing depending on where you stand on the Scottish actor’s previous hyperviolent action films.

Fans of Butler’s ridiculous but nonetheless entertaining action films – especially the “Have Fallen” series in which he plays a Secret Service agent who kills about a bajillion baddies over the bloodsoaked trilogy – know what to expect: A man of few words stabbing, shooting, garroting, detonating and otherwise brutally dispatching his (faceless) enemies.

So you go into “Greenland” with a set of expectations. Butler will play a family man with some kind of violent past – say a special forces soldier or retired spy – who will stop at nothing to save his family from armageddon.

Oh, and a lot of people will get shot in the head.

Your expectations would be wrong with “Greenland,” now streaming on digital platforms.

Butler is just a normal guy here who can’t kill you 30 different ways with a spoon. Slight spoiler here: Butler’s hero does dispatch one guy in a brutal way in “Greenland,” but feels really bad after he does the deed.

So, no, this isn’t “Armageddon Has Fallen” – and that’s a good thing.

Butler plays John, a structural engineer and architect, who spends most of his time in “Greenland” driving his wife and kid (Morena Baccarin and Roger Dale Floyd) through armageddon-level traffic.

The plot is relatively simple and refreshingly straightforward: An “extinction-level” comet is hurtling towards Earth and the government has (sort of secretly) designated people who could help with the recovery of the human race. (Architects make the cut apparently.)

The wrinkle: The selected few have to get first to an Army base where they will be then whisked off to a series of vast underground bunkers to ride out the aftermath of the comet’s impact in an expected 72 hours.

Thus we get a lot of scenes of John gripping his vehicle’s wheel as he tries to get to the designated Army base. There’s a whole bunch of obstacles in his family’s way – some contrived others clever – to complicate the film’s twohour running time.

In most disaster movies, characters can be counted to do dumb things to put their characters in more peril, but in “Greenland” John and his wife, Allison, make mostly logical and reasonable decisions that nonetheless put them in peril.

There’s an effective sequence in which Allison finds herself in a car with a pleasant couple who she slowly discovers aren’t so pleasant. Watching the way Baccarin changes her character’s facial reactions as she tries to figure out a way of her predicament is one of the highlights of the film.

Good too is a brief appearance by the always welcome Scott Glenn (“The Right Stuff ”) as Allison’s widowed father. Their scenes together – along with the character’s grandson – gives the movie an emotional heft that is devoid from most other disaster movies.

Director Ric Roman Waugh also deserves credit for effectively using some nifty and scary special effects not as a crutch for a thin plot but to further his story. An extended sequence in which a highway full of cars is deluged with fiery pieces of the comet is both horrifying and exciting.

STXFILMS Morena Baccarin, from left, Roger Dale Floyd and Gerard Butler in a scene from the film “Greenland.”

STXFILMS A comet hits Earth creating mayhem in “Greenland.”