London Has Fallen

London Has Fallen (2016)

28% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 197 reviews)

Runtime: 99 minutes

Directed by: Babak Najafi

Starring: Many famous faces, some of whom don't do much else than stay in one room and are usually sitting down

From: Gramercy

A bridge in London is in fact seen falling down.

Back two months ago I viewed Olympus Has Fallen for the first time; while preposterous and bombastic, it at least delivered R-rated action and provided entertainment, even if some of it was unintentional laughs. London I understood was seen as “ugly” by some, whether it be the visuals (which were on the drab side) or its xenophobic attitude straight out of the 80's. Admittedly, more than once the movie seemed more like Team America: World Police than a serious product; as I heard speculated, if director Babak Najafi (an Iranian who fled to Sweden w/ his family as a kid due to the Iran-Iraq war) was able to inject satire into an overblown product concerning how great 'Murica is and only macho he-man Mike Banning can defeat all those Pakistani terrorists as the other G8 countries are ineffectual wimps... who knows for certain. Personally this was not taken entirely seriously by myself.

The leader of those Pakistani terrorists at least has a valid reason for revenge: collateral damage had a major impact on his family. Then again he sells arms to everyone so it's difficult to have too much sympathy for him. His elaborate plan was rather far-fetched, which did make me chuckle. Many action scenes occur, which overall were fine... one was a faux one-take bit which was the most inspired segment. If only the CG didn't usually look rather horrid...

London Has Fallen has goofy one-liners (including one involving “coming out of the closet”), Banning yelling at a terrorist to “go back to f***headistan”, a talented cast where some only sits or stands around in one room, and a gauche patriotic speech I imagine Trump wishes he could have made... people loathing the movie is a valid reaction to have. Personally, London Has Fallen does come across as a parody-even if it wasn't supposed to be-and Banning has turned into a psychopath, it was fun to laugh AT and WITH.