London Has Fallen

Remember how great it was when everyone made fun of Hollywood for bring out the same movie twice in 2013 (although it's far from the first time they've done it). The White House fell down twice in one summer and everyone had a chuckle. Now think about this, the one that gets a sequel was the one where the president isn't black. That's something we should all think about. But don't worry people, the Vice President is Morgan Freeman in this one, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The set up for this movie is either one big joke or whoever wrote this movie must be highly uneducated. The Prime Minister of England dies of a heart attack and all the major leaders of the western world attend the state funeral. Ok let's start, yes, if the sitting Prime Minister of England died, there would be state funeral. Would all the world leaders attend? Probably not, they have countries to run. If leaders did come, they wouldn't be from Italy, Germany and Japan, but New Zealand, Australia and Canada (don't worry Canada, you get repped in this movie). President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) does attend, but can't help but feel like something will go wrong (because when all the world leaders get together something is bound to go wrong, just like in real life). The head of his Secret Service detail Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) feels the same. And just like the end of Ghostbusters or people who still believe in The Secret, they will the bad stuff to happen. Terrorists, led by weapons dealer Amir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul), end up hijacking London and killing all the leaders apart from the faithful President, who survives thanks to his one man army.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I found myself siding with the terrorists on this one. I mean the Americans did approve a drone strike on a wedding where they knew more civilians were than terrorists were present. We live in a world where there's a movie about the decision to commit to a drone strike because there's a single child in the neighbourhood (see Eye in the Sky), so a mass murder like this seems very extreme. I'm surprised they waited two years to retaliate. An even more bizarre thing about this movie is that director Babak Najafi is Iranian and although the bad guys in this movie are Pakastani, it is still a very anti-Muslim, pro-Western democracy movie. The bad guys are treated like characters in a video game and the movie does have the sensibilities of one. The action sequences toward the end even feel like you're playing a level of Call of Duty, complete with a hard to beat villain at the end.

The casting seems very off for this movie. I understand bringing back the three main leads, Butler, Eckhart and Freeman, and tossing in a new villain, but did they really have to use Melissa Leo and Robert Forster again. They play bigwigs in the US Defence Force and you barely see them at all. Both are veteran actors whose talents could be put to better use elsewhere. Same could be said of Jackie Earle Haley who is introduced only to say a couple of lines in the background. Gerard Butler really needs to stick to roles where he can use his natural Scottish accent because he has a horrible American one. British actress Charlotte Riley could have used more screen time because she was fantastic as MI6 agent Jax. The same could be said of Patrick Kennedy who was a minor villain. Both Waleed Zuaiter and Alon Moni Aboutboul were fantastically underused.

Despite the video game aesthetics there really isn't anything remotely enjoyable about London Has Fallen except maybe the caricatures of current world leaders.