London Has Fallen, the Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart-starring sequel to “Die Hard In The White House” film Olympus Has Fallen, is shoddy, offensive and mean-spirited. It’s sloppy even when compared to its predecessor and not particularly highly recommended to anyone beyond chest-thumping red-blooded American bros.
Which is weird, because I kind of enjoyed myself.
Look, I’ll get back to laying out all the reasons London Has Fallen is a bad film. Because it is a bad film that borders on loathsome at times. But I also want to explain why I had fun with it. And the main reason is: This franchise is the type of thing that used to hit megaplexes all the time when I was growing up, but doesn’t anymore. And yeah, I miss them. Hard-R action movies with square jawed leading men were the bread and butter of my cinematic youth. And if I’m being honest, they’re the cinematic bread and butter of my cinematic mid-life crisis as well. There are many, many better action films than London Has Fallen. But you most likely won’t see them in wide release at your local multiplex anymore. The Fallen franchise has managed to eek out an existence with JUST enough star power and JUST the right budget (read: very low) to make it into wide release with its hard-R rating intact. And that rating I keep mentioning is truly important when explaining why I had fun with the film. Butler’s secret service agent character Mike Bannon is a raging, murderous psychopath who takes every possible opportunity to shoot villains in the head and eyes. Specifically those places. And if he can kill one guy with a knife to the eye, then later pull that knife out of the eye and kill another guy with the same knife… all the better. The violence is over the top and solicits laughter and gasps from the audience. Watching Mike Bannon protect America is, simply put, escapist entertainment at its most broad and fantastical. It used to be that the hero with the biggest muscles saved the day. Today it’s simply the hero who murders the most bad guys. And with the action captured well by director Babak Najafi (Easy Money II: Hard To Kill) and ridiculous set piece after ridiculous set piece, the film delivers on its promise. It’s bigger than Olympus Has Fallen in that it’s more spread out. This isn’t necessarily a plus, but it does allow for sequences of Bannon and President Benjamin Asher to be totally alone, running around the streets of London trying to escape roving bands of motorcycle-riding terrorists. At one point Bannon slips into a terrorist bunker undetected and single-handedly dismantles a small army after having a special ops team simply wait outside. It’s so brazenly detached from reality that it entertains on a Fast/Furious level of fantasy. And so help me… I was entertained.
Here in London Has Fallen, a Middle Eastern baron of some kind has launched an all out assault on the west by coordinating an attack on London when a number of world leaders are there for a state funeral. It’s a direct response to the opening scene of the film in which a drone attack destroys his family. The film becomes overtly political and starts treading uncomfortable waters right out of the gate in that sense. The terrorists never reference Islam in any way, if I’m not mistaken, so the filmmakers made at least some attempts at keeping the xenophobia aimed simply towards Middle Eastern people in general versus towards Muslims specifically. It’s a failed attempt and creating a scenario where the audience is just as angry at the Western governments as the villain is was both a weird choice and a poor one. Having Butler reigning fire on really anyone BUT Middle Easterners would have been a much better choice. In fact, this is somewhat attempted in that many British cops and officials have been bought out by the villains and so “Team President Bros” are often fighting the fair-skinned.
The film’s rating also at times feels like an impediment, with Angela Bassett dropping the F-bomb repeatedly in ways which felt forced. And Gerard Butler repeatedly screaming “Eff You” to humans he has just turned into corpses. As much as I just mentioned how basely entertaining it is to watch Bannon destroy the enemy, there’s a weird amount of enjoyment he takes in it which is supposed to be the audience’s enjoyment. Bannon also does things which make no strategic sense whatsoever just to be more badass, I guess. He taunts the villains over the radio, which made strategic sense in Die Hard when Bruce Willis did it, and actually seems moronic here when outmatched a hundred to one with the POTUS’ life in the balance.
Aside from the heinous treatment of Middle Easterners as the villains, and the politicization of this lowbrow entertainment coming at a sensitive time for our country, there’s also a wincingly homophobic “out of the closet” joke, and just lots of general head-scratching plot developments, poorly written escalation, a comical number of global politicians introduced with on-screen text only to be summarily murdered moments later… the movie is just sloppy and cheap-feeling.
It’s almost like they put all their money into the action sequences. Which is… exactly what I would have wanted. It’s a step down from Olympus, it’s a step way down in political appropriateness, it’s a step up in murderous psychosis, and I can only recommend it to people who have a similar mental illness to my own in which we’re simply in love with ridiculous action movies and can only ask your forgiveness or seek help for our affliction.
And I’m Out.
Originally published at old.cinapse.co on March 3, 2016.