London Has Fallen

I was reminded of an old gag on The Simpsons while I was watching London Has Fallen.  They used to do a series of skits on the cartoon about a hyper-violent action character named McBane.  He was played by an Arnold Schwarzenegger type, and his movies would always revolve around him killing hundreds of people callously and without remorse, all the while throwing out deadpan one liners.  This movie is a 100 minute long variation on those cartoon shorts.  It's non-stop violence that means absolutely nothing, while the heroes crack jokes back and forth to each other, not caring about the untold number of people (sometimes innocent) who are dying all around them.

I wouldn't be so offended by the level of violence if the movie had treated it with any weight or consequence.  Here is a movie where we get to see a bus full of tourists get crushed by falling debris, dozens of people plunge to their deaths when a bridge explodes, a woman being offered a flower by a little girl, only to have the woman get blasted moments later (complete with close up of the blood-splattered flower for effect), the President of the United States being threatened with decapitation by a massive blade, and a woman get impaled after a helicopter crash. (Despite the fact that she is impaled through the chest and near death, someone optimistically suggests that they try to "hold back the bleeding".) The movie uses strong images of gore and terrorism, and if the movie had an opinion about those acts of violence, that would be something.  But, I'm afraid the filmmakers intend these images to be used for entertainment only.  This is the kind of film that introduces a character for the sole purpose of having them die horribly just a few moments later.

London Has Fallen is the unnecessary sequel to 2013's Olympus Has Fallen.  That was the movie where Gerard Butler played a Secret Service Agent who had to save the President (played back then and here again by Aaron Eckhart) from terrorists who overthrew the White House.  This time, Butler's character, Mike Banning, is tasked with keeping the President safe when he arrives in London for a funeral where all the world's leaders are attending.  Turns out the entire thing was a trap set up by the notorious terrorist, Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul), who wants to kill hundreds of people and blow up nearly every major landmark in London in order to get to the President, so that he can kill him in a live video that will be posted on social media.  Funny thing about Mr. Barkawi.  We are told at one point that he has "killed more people than the Plague".  Despite this, he is only Number 6 on the Ten Most Wanted List.  This brings about the question as to how many people the Number 5 person has killed, and just how many dead people does it take to even crack the Top 10?

So Mike and the President are forced to make their way across London, not sure who to trust, since it seems that a large part of the police force are in ties with the terrorists.  Turns out there's a Mole within Scotland Yard who is feeding Barkawi info, and if you can't figure out who the Mole is the second they walk on the screen, then you're just the audience this movie is looking for.  There are a lot of tedious firefights, more than a few explosions, and while all this is going on, Mike and the President of the United States exchange glib one liners and jokes.  They never once seem to care much about the damage that has been done all around them, nor of the hundreds of innocent lives that have been lost.  They're trapped in a Hollywood action film, and act as such.  The movie tries to give the heroes some motivation by giving Mike a pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell) who is waiting for him back home, and due to give birth any day now.  Will Mike manage to make it home in time to see his baby born?  I wouldn't dream of spoiling the ending.

If the movie wants to be escapism, why does it show such graphic images of terrorism violence that will have audiences squirming in their seats?  And if it wants to be realistic and harsh, then why does the movie make the characters such smart alecks and jokers in the face of horrific violence?  It tries to have it both ways, and ends up not satisfying either category.  And then there are the numerous big names in the movie like Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett and Melissa Leo, who were all in the original film, and seem to have come back for this sequel due to contract obligation only.  The script gives them little to do, and almost shoehorns them in.  In fact, it almost feels like this script was originally just a random action movie, but after Olympus Has Fallen become a surprise hit, the filmmakers were desperate for a sequel, and just decided to take a script they had lying around, and plug characters from the first movie into it.  That would explain why so many of these talented actors are tossed aside for most of the film.

London Has Fallen is an awkward and ill-fitting sequel that didn't need to be made.  It's bad enough that it exists simply due to corporate greed, since there was no need to continue the story from the first.  But then it sinks even lower by reveling in such gratuitous violence.  I get the sense that the filmmakers just wanted this movie to be mindless fun.  They got the mindless part right, at least.

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