London Has Fallen – Film Review
Oh man, yet another movie all about how the Americans save the day on foreign territory. Hollywood really needs to start making way for other nations to make more mainstream action films so that we at least can experience these mindless scenes from a different perspective.
Before you watch the movie, though, keep in mind that London Has Fallen is actually the sequel to Olympus Has Fallen. It will save you a lot of time wondering whether or not you have already seen this movie before. From where the action kicks off, the plot of the movie is almost exactly the same as the first one.
In this installment, however, when all the major leaders of the world gather in London for the Prime Minister’s funeral, a group of Middle Eastern terrorists targets all the leaders, one by one. The group of terrorists manages to take them all down, save, of course, the President of the United States (Aaron Eckhart), who cannot be found – mostly thanks to his agile and highly skilled bodyguard, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler).
For a major action film of 2016 the story and cinematic elements deliver a little less than expected. I suppose the decision to change the setting to a different location is meant to make it alarming on a more global scale but the story’s predictable and patriotic angle just makes it look like entertainment propaganda. The graphics are mediocre to say the least and there are so many potholes in the plot of the story. These generate various distracting questions. Like how has the enemy managed to infiltrate supposedly the most buffed up intelligence force yet again? Did they not up their intelligence ante from the first attack? Surely the fact that it is a movie cannot excuse such lazy scriptwriting. Also, we do not really get much insight into many of the characters and it becomes a question why some even feature in the first place.
The feeling of restlessness for the protagonists to defeat the enemy is mild because the story is so predictable, and even the key characters are rather flat. The US President, who quite valiantly likes to wear the hat of “the Leader of the Free World” seems annoyingly naïve and sheepish.
It is clear that the plot and dialogue carry the least importance of the film and each development is only meant to link one extravagant scene to another.
No doubt, the film does not fail to deliver some strong bits of action. The action scenes are vivid and loud, with a few injections of wit to balance out some of the intensity. Any fan of wild shootings and crashes will definitely get what they are looking for. Thank goodness this movie keeps it together in this regard because it falls apart in so many other places. Still, if I am being honest, the absence of these other important elements makes London Has Fallen only really worth watching on your laptop.
