The meatier material may be in the second half, but he relies a tad too heavily on various levels of gruff to get his point across. Butler is stronger in those earlier scenes, charming and warm and understandable as the safe port in a storm. He gets the most thorough and dramatic narrative of the trio, morphing from a happy-go-lucky man with small dreams who keeps the lighthouse team bound together to a paranoid mess haunted by the depths he’s sunk to. It’s not hard to see why Butler, who is also a producer on this film, would be drawn to his role. Nyholm, who worked a lot on the crime drama The Killing, captures that strange exhaustion of Scottish weather: You get used to the damp and the wind but you always feel a little bit trapped by it, and once the winds pick up, the claustrophobia sets in. For a little while, the sharp winds and grey skies don’t feel so ominous, but that doesn’t last long. It’s also happy to languish in their comforting monotony, as they catch crabs, sing shanties and clear up dead seagulls. The Vanishing takes its time in establishing the central three and what differentiates them from one another. All they have is one another but it takes next to nothing for that shaky circle of trust to crumble, so the moment the inciting incident that leads to the vanishing occurs, the sense of dread is off the charts. The three men sent on their latest shift to the island - the gruff old-hand (Peter Mullan), the jovial family man (Gerard Butler), and the young first-timer (Connor Swindells from Sex Education, who isn’t Scottish but does a surprisingly solid accent) - are bound by gentle camaraderie but mostly the monotony of the job. Thankfully, The Vanishing chooses not to go for the obvious supernatural slant and decides to go more for a Treasure of the Sierra Madre-inspired tale of paranoia, greed and boredom in the savage wild. The lighthouse keepers were probably swept out to sea by an unexpected wave, but that hasn’t stopped a solid century of ghost story re-writings. The Flannan Isles disappearances is one of those old Scottish ghost stories you hear a lot if you’re super into unsolved mysteries and folklore. The trio, comprised of Gerard Butler, Peter Mullan and Connor Swindells, must survive tough weather, the panic of isolation and the inescapable company of one another. Inspired by the true story of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse disappearances from 1900, Danish director Kristoffer Nyholm’s thriller follows three men on their six-week shift tending to the lighthouse on the remote islands off the West Coast of the Hebrides. Unlike many of his other movies, this one wants you to take it seriously. But The Vanishing is a very different beast. When I want a Geostorm, I know I can rely on him to provide it. Yes, I am aware that this sounds condescending as all hell, but I’ve watched a lot of this guy’s movies and I’ve found immense comfort in his perpetual C- status.
Gerard butler movies lighthouse movie#
So, what happens when, against all expectations and the sheer forces of nature, Butler makes a movie that’s actually really good? However, you typically know what you’re going to get with a Gerry Butler joint: Guns, explosions, an every-man protagonist who is still the Most Important Person who has ever lived, and a narrative of self-aware schlock with its tongue firmly in-between its cheek. One does not go to the majority of his movies for quality, if you catch my drift. He’s not exactly a man whose name inspires cinematic confidence these days.
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