Franchise should stay down
Sequel’s mindlessness and single-mindedness converge in a hail of bullets
An evil mastermind plots to bring together a group of highranking, talented leaders, only to lay waste to them in a storm of meaningless violence.
That’s the plot of London Has Fallen, but it pretty much sums up the film’s casting strategy as well.
Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Radha Mitchell, Melissa Leo, Jackie Earle Haley — these are some acting heavyweights, yet even their combined influence can’t elevate the story above the baseline of generic thriller, or rein in some of its more obnoxious xenophobic urges.
Its 2013 predecessor, Olympus Has Fallen, was basically Die Hard in the White House, with Eckhart as the terrorist-beleaguered President Benjamin Asher, and Butler as his chief Secret Service protector, Mike Banning. The sequel finds Mike about to become a father, and also pondering his resignation. Normally, either of these plot points would be enough to unleash chaos. Both together prove unstoppable.
And so the British prime minister dies of an apparent heart attack, causing world leaders to convene on London for the funeral. We see the French president with his aides, the Japanese PM with his chauffeur, the Canadian PM with his wife, and Italy’s leader with, apparently, his young mistress. Cultural stereotyping or screenwriting shortcut? You decide.
There’s even less subtlety when London is besieged by an unbelievably numerous and wellarmed foe, their attacks depicted through a weird combination of state-of-the-art computer graphics and shots that look like Lego models collapsing.
“They’ve decimated most of London’s known landmarks,” a reporter announces breathlessly, leading us to wonder: Are there unknown landmarks? Is that even possible? But there’s little time to ponder such questions once the action gets rolling. “Get down!” Butler yells about 20 minutes into the movie, and after that point he never looks back. To be fair, he never actually looks forward or sideways either, declaring: “All these guys are terrorist a--holes until proven otherwise.” This is a movie where mindlessness and single-mindedness converge in a hail of bullets. Olympus Has Fallen was directed by Antoine Fuqua, and included such amusements as a bad guy getting clocked with a bust of Abraham Lincoln — an emancipation altercation, if you will. Even at that, it managed to be only the critics’ second favourite president-in-peril movie of 2013, after White House Down.
London Has Fallen, helmed by Babak Najafi (Easy Money II), has no such wry humour. No one is scalded with a cup of really hot tea or bitten by a corgi. About the best we get is when Butler is told he’ll be facing almost 100 bad guys and his response is to growl: “They should’ve brought more.”
And the labels! Every minor character in the White House situation room or New Scotland Yard gets an onscreen credit spelling out name and rank, in spite of the fact that few of them do anything besides bite their nails and look worried.
We also get “Washington” over a shot of beefeaters patrolling a royal palace; “Stanstead Airport” in front of a domed church; and “London” with a picture of the Capitol building. What’s that you’re saying? I mixed up the labels? Of course I did — to demonstrate why we don’t even need them. You know Buckingham Palace when you see it. Honestly, if there were any more writing on the screen this would count as a subtitled movie.
Instead, it’s a film that at once assaults and insults our intelligence as filmgoers. Najafi can handle a car- or helicopter-chase scene well enough, and he includes a few cinematic flourishes, although that long, unbroken shot late in the film merely tells me he enjoyed Children of Men as much as I did.
Here’s hoping London puts a cap on the franchise. It has clearly fallen and can’t get up.