London Has Fallen

Released: March 2016

Director: Babak Najafi

Rated R

Run Time: 99 Minutes

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Music: Trevor Morris

Cast:
Gerard Butler: Mike Banning
Aaron Eckhart: President Asher
Morgan Freeman: Vice President Trumbull
Alon Aboutbouli: Aamir Barkawi
Angela Bassett: Lynne Jacobs

A few years back, a nifty little action film from director Antoine Fuqua called Olympus Has Fallen was released.  It was pretty damn good action flick starring Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart.  It was about terrorists taking over the White House.  It was one of two movies that did so.  The other one was White House Down, which I haven’t seen.  Anyway, Olympus Has Fallen was a surprisingly effective and intense little movie.  It was like Die Hard in the White House.  In fact, Olympus felt more like a Die Hard 5 than the actual Die Hard 5.  They screwed the pooch on that one.  Part of what made Olympus work so well, was the relationship between the two leads, Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart.  It worked.  Was the film cliche?  Absolutely.  Was it realistic?  Not a chance in hell, but it didn’t need to be.  The action was awesome, brutal, and intense.  Did it really need a sequel, though?  The short answer, I’m afraid, is no.  I’ll get into that later, but in the meantime, let’s dig in to the follow-up film, London Has Fallen.

Following the events of OlympusLondon Has Fallen follows Benjamin Asher as the President of the United States as he and his Secret Service agent Mike Banning are alerted that the Prime Minister of England has died.  They head to London to attend his funeral.  All the leaders of the free world are attending when the city comes under attack by generic Middle-Eastern terrorists.  Really?  A number of the world leaders have been assassinated while Mike and President Asher escape.  Apparently, the terrorists want to execute Asher for terrorist reasons.  It seems they have infiltrated a number of police units and other public services.  You know, a sequel is supposed to deliver what the audience expects plus something new to keep them guessing.  We don’t get anything new here.  London Has Fallen hits every single action film trope in the book, and not even the good ones.  It’s extremely predictable.  That’s not to say that the first movie was unpredictable.  It wasn’t.  But it wasn’t lazy.  The story in this movie is as generic as they come, with a generic enemy.  Maybe it’s the current political climate, but the use of Middle-Eastern terrorists is really old hat.

Babak Najafi takes the director’s seat here, and it really shows.  There’s nothing particularly surprising about what happens in the movie.  The action is…well….weak.  Most of the explosions that you see are CGI, and blatantly so.  Now, I understand that you can’t go around blowing actual landmarks in London, that would be…bad.  But you could build some models that  you could destroy.  It’s an old-fashioned technique but it’s always worked.  The problem is that you just don’t care about the characters.  Even in the first movie, you kinda gave a shit, but here, not so much.  Instead, you’re going to be wondering what kind of president is going to constantly get himself into trouble with terrorists.  Asher is a terrible president.  Honestly, Gerard Butler’s character should be fired for not keeping the president out of trouble.  The first movie worked, because you didn’t expect terrorists to actually hit the White House.  From the character’s perspective, he had no idea that the White House was going to be hit.  Here, he’s put into a situation with thousands of complete strangers looking on what’s going.  Why would you do that?  There’s a lot of stupid decision-making going on here.  Again, the action is serviceable but not entirely memorable.  The idea that a terrorist organization could pull of an attack this coordinated is a scary thing, but in this day and age of constant surveillance it’s extremely unlikely that these organizations could do something this coordinated.  It’s not handled well here.

The acting in the film is pretty much just….meh.  Yeah, Eckhart’s and Butler’s characters have chemistry for sure, but that’s because we have two fairly good actors in the lead, although, Butler’s American accent is pretty atrocious, but he gets the whole action-hero thing down to a tee.  He’s always fun to watch.  Everybody else, though, is completely wasted.  Half of them are nothing more than extended cameos.  Jackie Earle Haley is forgettable, and he’s a great actor.  Morgan Freeman’s character is just….there.  The villain isn’t over-the-top, which for a movie of this kind, needed to be over-the-top.  Alon Aboutbouli plays the main villain, but all he does is….talk and threaten.  That’s all.  Rick Yune’s character from the first movie, was more than up for shooting people and delivering spin kicks to people’s heads.  His character was MEAN.  Aamir Bakawi?  Ehh…

Overall, the film just feels…generic.  It doesn’t do or try anything new, it just retreads old ground that’s been better in the previous film and other films before it.  London Has Fallen isn’t an awful movie, I’ve seen a lot worse.  But there’s nothing here that you’ll remember in a day or two.  It’s an average movie, and in a year that has some of the biggest movies of the decade, London Has Fallen isn’t even close to being up to the task.  My final verdict for the film is a 6/10.  It’s extremely forgettable, unless you’re a diehard fan of Gerard Butler, but even then, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything worth-while.

 

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