SECOND SCREEN
As you might expect from a film that blithely blows up half a city’s best-known landmarks inside half an hour, London Has Fallen (15A) H occupies that uncomfortable territory between being out-and-out awful and so bad it’s very nearly worth a look. Certainly, there are moments when Gerard Butler’s über-squarejawed brand of acting – he plays US Secret Service agent Mike Banning – and some truly awful dialogue had a press screening audience rocking with laughter. Which was probably not what Butler – who also executive produces – and director Babak Najafi were hoping for when they set out to make a sequel to the already thoroughly underwhelming Olympus Has
Fallen from 2013. When the Prime Minister dies suddenly, world leaders descend on London for the funeral, unaware that they are falling into a long-planned trap devised by an evil arms dealer seeking to avenge the drone-strike that killed his daughter. Courtesy of some sub-standard visual effects, unconvincing chaos duly ensues that takes in St Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey (bringing to an early end the romantic roof top assignation being comically shared by an ageing Italian PM and his beautiful young assistant), the Houses of Parliament and Chelsea Bridge.
Very soon, London is full of terrorists, the US President (Aaron Eckhart) is on the run and the only man who can save him, of course, is Banning.
The Pierce Brosnan film Survivor, recent Bonds and Spooks have all covered similar ground recently but none of them as unconvincingly as this. ‘How bad is it?’ asks Morgan Freeman, newly elevated to VicePresident Trumbull.
‘It’s really goddam bad,’ he’s told. Which is about right.
Not only have we had two snowbound Westerns this winter ( The Revenant and
The Hateful Eight) we now have our second film about journalistic investigations in America, with
Truth (15A) following hot on the heels of the surprise