London Has Fallen (2016) [Blu-ray]
Action | Crime | Drama | Thriller

Tagline: Prepare for bloody hell

In this follow-up to the thriller Olympus Has Fallen, Gerarld Butler returns as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning in London Has Fallen, the high-octane sequel to the box office smash Olympus Has Fallen. In London for the funeral of the British prime minister, the worl'd most powerful leaders find themselves being picked off one by one by a sinister terrorist group who are now planning to take out United States President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) next. It is up to Banning to protect the President, and secure his safe return home. Also starring Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett, London Has Fallen is an action-packed, thrill-a-minute experience.

Storyline: After the British Prime Minister has passed away under mysterious circumstances, all leaders of the Western world must attend his funeral. But what starts out as the most protected event on earth, turns into a deadly plot to kill the world's most powerful leaders and unleash a terrifying vision of the future. The President of the United States, his formidable secret service head and a British MI-6 agent who trusts no one are the only people that have any hope of stopping it. Written by Anonymous

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, May 24, 2016 2013 saw the release of dueling "White House Siege" movies, Roland Emmerich's White House Down and Antonie Fuqua's Olympus Has Fallen. The latter is unquestionably the better of the two. It's a film that revitalized the survival-action style popularized by Die Hard and benefitted from a strong cast, expertly-staged action scenes, solid characterization, and Fuqua's steady hand. The picture's success unsurprisingly spurred talk of a sequel, but how does a filmmaker go bigger when the original laid siege to one of the world's most iconic structures? Easy. Lay siege to one of the world's most iconic cities. Unfortunately, in this case, "bigger" doesn't mean "better." London Has Fallen is a mess of a movie. It's a completely derivative and unnecessary follow-up that retains the same core cast but little else. Gone is the scope, scale, intensity, and creativity that made the first an excellent Action flick. The film sorely misses Antoine Fuqua's skill behind the camera, but it's doubtful a filmmaker of even his ability could have done more than salvage a dreadful film that amounts to nothing more than noise and explosions.

Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is still on President Benjamin Asher's (Aaron Eckhart) Secret Service detail. But he wants out. His wife Leah (Radha Mitchell) is pregnant, and rather than keep risking his life -- even for a man he holds in high regard and considers a friend -- he's decided to retire. He can't quite bring himself to finish a draft of a resignation letter and finds himself on security detail when the President, and other world leaders, converge in London to attend the funeral of the recently deceased British Prime Minister. Upon their arrival, London comes under attack. Explosions and gunfire rock the city. Causalities mount. Marine One, carrying both Banning and Asher, is downed. The two have no choice but escape on foot and fight for survival against overwhelming odds and a determined enemy.

This is the kind of cinema drivel normally reserved for direct-to-video sequels and spinoffs, not major theatrical releases. While the first movie wasn't exactly a bastion of creativity, this sequel has none. It paints a plot so devoid of creativity that it could literally stand-in as the template for a guide to making a quick and dirty Action flick. Bad guy is targeted for termination, bad guy wants revenge. Stuff blows up. There are people in harm's way and other people watching it all unfold in a conference room. More stuff blows up, more people shoot at one another. Can the hero save the day? It's not exactly rocket science, and yes, it's a formula that's worked very well in the past in films like the aforementioned Die Hard and other good Action movies like Air Force One. But London Has Fallen takes it to the extreme. It banks entirely on name recognition and on-screen chaos to sucker in viewers. When is the last time an Action movie worked on noise and visuals alone? There's got to be a spirit, a sense of humor, some endearing quality for the audience to rally around. That's why Arnold Schwarzenegger movies work so well. That's why Die Hard and most of its sequels remain popular staples in the Action rotation. London Has Fallen epitomizes the phrase "going through the motions." It's a heartless exercise in crude moviemaking that can't even make its otherwise well staged shootouts and scenes of chaos even remotely enjoyable.

One could watch the movie on mute and not miss a thing (except for the Blu-ray's excellent lossless soundtrack). Every scene telegraphs everything one needs to know on a visual basis alone. The attack on the terrorist compound, the work in the nursery, the retirement letter Banning desperately wants to send, the explosions, the war room roundtables, the shootouts...none of it requires the least bit of expository support or verbal background characterization. At one point Banning snags a walkie talkie off a wounded terrorist. He goes through the motions of tough talk chatter without a smidgen of soul or intensity. He doesn't care, and neither does the audience. All that matters is getting to a point that people can fire their guns again, but to tide things over Banning stabs the wounded bad guy so his cries can be heard over the radio. That knife may as well be digging into the audience's souls, twisting and turning as any goodwill the original movie created oozes from the wound. But muting the movie would mean that the audience would miss out on some of the highlight dialogue exchanges, like this one:

Banning is driving through traffic and trying to escape the chaos. A bad guy leaps onto the door and holds on through the window.

Bad Guy: "F*** you!"

Banning: "F*** me?"

Banning steers the vehicle so the bad guy is smushed between the vehicle and a pillar.

Banning: "F*** you!" as the body rolls away in a tangle.

Oh dear. No spirit. No spirit. "Yippee ki-yay motherf*****" works, and has become part of the popular vernacular, because there's spirit behind it, because the characters are well drawn, and the audience is engaged in the story and the characters. London Has Fallen just drops big piles of garbage into the movie and expects it to garner laughs and oohs and aahs. It doesn't work here, and it'll never work anywhere else. Add that the movie is filled with miserable CGI that's only a step above the cheap stuff from The Asylum and it's not London Has Fallen but rather Franchise Has Fallen.

London Has Fallen has almost zero redeeming value. Even the venerable Morgan Freeman, who does little more than sit at a table and look into the camera now and then, can't save it. There's no spark, no spirit, no sense of adventure. It's a miserable movie and a hugely disappointing followup to one of the better Action flicks of the 2010's. Universal's Blu-ray delivers standout audio, good video, and a couple of extras. Worth a rental only.

[CSW] -1.3- What can you say about a great action movie that has so many plot holes that that it is literally beyond belief. I might have enjoyed it more if I could have stopped myself from constantly saying and thinking "It doesn't work that way." The number of things that are so wrong are almost endless. From a place full of fake cops that no one notices beforehand including the real cops to people being stabbed with knives through body armor to tons of explosives being secretly planted in landmark building and structures for years with no discovery. I can always over look guns that fire more times than any magazine could possibly hold and even very improbable chase scenes, but this film had so many other plot holes that it caused my "suspension of disbelief" to snap back so hard that I would actually groan and shake my head no. It is an action movie that has only one redeeming quality, the visual effects are fantastic. However that alone is just not enough jack it up out of the mud.
[V4.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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