2.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang
Aaron Eckhart’s Benjamin Asher
surely is the unluckiest U.S. President in cinema history.
Bad enough that he only narrowly
survived being held hostage by North Korean terrorists, in 2013’s deplorably
violent and inexcusably jingoistic Olympus Has Fallen. Now, drawn to London to attend the state funeral of the British
Prime Minister, President Asher finds himself targeted — along with half a
dozen other Western European heads of state — by a lethal arms dealer who also
is one of the world’s most wanted criminals.
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| When their helicopter is shot down by rooftop terrorists armed with Stinger missiles, ace Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, right) is the only man left to protect U.S. President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) from hoards of gun-toting thugs. |
Fortunately, in both cases, ace
Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is on hand to save the day.
For the most part, director Babak
Najafi’s London Has Fallen is the
sort of bullet-laden action thriller that generally goes straight to late-night
time slots on Cinemax and lesser cable/satellite movie channels. The plot is
predictably silly, the good guys utterly indestructible — aside from those dispatched
as sacrificial lambs — and the bad guys thoroughly reprehensible.
The difference, as was the case
with this series’ first entry, is that London
Has Fallen boasts a better-than-average cast, with Butler and Eckhart
supported by Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett and numerous other solid character
actors. But even good actors can’t do much with dumb scripts, a grim premise
and vapid execution.
Najafi brings nothing to the
party. His camera set-ups are humdrum, and he hasn’t the faintest idea how to
build suspense. This is little more than run and shoot, run and shoot.
The (modestly) good news is that
this new film isn’t quite as offensively pugnacious as its predecessor, which
was scripted solely by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt. They’re assisted
this time by co-writers Christian Gudegast and Chad St. John, although I can’t
imagine why four people were required to write such a simplistic, comic book
plot.
On top of which, the flag-waving,
gung-ho patriotism that Rothenberger and Benedikt established in Olympus is just as evident here, and
perhaps even more so. Films of this nature are an embarrassment, with their
suggestion that brave and resourceful Americans — and only Americans — are the one thing preventing maddened terrorists
from invading and controlling the entire free world.
Which is to say, this script is
offensively cavalier with its treatment of government officials — and their
colleagues — from France, Italy, Germany, Japan and elsewhere. I guess the
British should feel lucky that they get to help Banning. A little.
This new adventure’s core
catastrophe has its origins during a prologue taking place two years earlier,
as vile international arms dealer Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul) attends
the wedding of his daughter. Unknown to all present, Western satellite cameras
have tracked Barkawi to this event, and an authorized drone strike demolishes
the entire compound.
At least, it sure looks like the explosion levels the
place. But despite the wedding party’s close proximity to each other, Barkawi
and his sons escape serious injury ... our first indication of many numb-nuts
contrivances to follow. The bride, alas, is among the dead; her father and
brothers swear vengeance.
That opportunity comes as the
story proper begins, with numerous powerful world leaders converging on London
to pay their respects. This turns out to be a meticulously planned trap, with
Barkawi somehow having laced the city’s police force with scores (hundreds?) of
his own mercenaries, all of whom start gunning down civilians and first
responders when clandestinely planted bombs topple various iconic London
structures.
One suspects that Scotland Yard’s
hiring and vetting practices must be awfully
sloppy, to admit so many bad apples in two short years ... but, hey, that’s the
sort of detail we’re simply supposed to ignore.
Just in passing, it’s equally
amazing that a few of the other world leaders are dispatched in unusual
locations: one individual caught in traffic on a particular bridge, another
snuffed during a spur-of-the-moment visit to one of London’s venerable landmarks.
Point being, how would the bad guys know that their targeted victims would be
in those spots, at precisely the right moment?
Stuff and nonsense.
Anyway, Banning manages to keep
President Asher one step ahead of the gun-toting thugs, thanks to both men
being conditioned joggers (as we’ve seen early on). Their ability to evade
capture annoys Barkawi’s son Kamran (Waleed F. Zuaiter), who is orchestrating
the carnage; he vows to start killing more civilians, unless he’s allowed to
decapitate Asher during a live Internet feed.
With the net tightening, Banning
reaches out to MI6 associate Jacquelin Marshall (Charlotte Riley), who controls
a safe house that offers momentary respite. Banning and Marshall agree, given
the degree of control Kamran has been able to exert on London’s electrical and
computer grid, that MI6 must have been infiltrated by a high-level mole. Could
it be Security Chief Hazard (Colin Salmon)?
Ah, but we’ve no time to ponder
this particular problem, since Kamran’s men burst into the safe house, somehow
having trailed our heroes there. Seriously?
Meanwhile, back in the White
House war room, Vice President Trumbull (Freeman) accepts a snarky phone call
from Barkawi, who coldly informs everybody that the era of Western values is at
an end, and all infidels will be destroyed, yadda-yadda-yadda. Secretary of
Defense Ruth McMillian (Melissa Leo) and hawkish Gen. Clegg (Robert Forster),
both returning from the first film, make a few useless comments to justify
their presence; newcomer Jackie Earle Haley’s Deputy Chief Mason bleats a few
of his own ineffectual observations.
These folks are the White House’s
best and brightest? Seriously?
All of these name co-stars
obviously spent no more than a single day on this one set; their presence is
utterly superfluous.
Freeman, ever the model of
methodical composure, at least seems
capable of some sort of intelligent response to events on the ground in London.
As also was true in the first
film, Butler makes a solid action hero, with the grit and physicality that such
a part requires. But his James Bond-ian efforts at mordant one-liners fall
completely flat, as do his tin-eared F-bombs. Actually, everybody in this film
swears a lot, often inappropriately, as if Najafi and his writers believed that
relentless profanity would enhance these events. (It doesn’t. Quite the
opposite.)
Bassett returns as Secret Service
Director Lynne Jacobs; she, at least, shows plenty of spunk and can-do spirit. Riley
is also solid as Banning’s MI6 counterpart, and Eckhart makes an amazingly
resilient and resourceful U.S. president. (I guess Asher got a lot of practice,
after his earlier exposure to terrorists.) Eckhart also does much better than Butler,
with the off-puttingly jokey quips.
Aboutboul and Zuaiter are
appropriately grim and chilling as Barkawi and his son.
Although this script takes pains
to establish Barkawi as an international
arms dealer, we cannot overlook the prologue’s setting in Pakistan, or the fact
that all of Barkawi and Kamran’s closest fellow terrorists are the epitome of
bearded Islamic fanatics, complete with taqiyahs and loose clothing. This is
obviously a deliberate artistic choice, intended to provoke the paranoia and
racist fury of nationalistic American imbeciles.
As was the case with Olympus Has Fallen, the line here
between popcorn action thrills and irresponsibly xenophobic propaganda seems
rather thin. Surely Butler and the rest of this largely wasted cast have much
better ways of filling out their résumés.
And I dearly hope we won’t have
to suffer through another one of these.
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