London Has Fallen Review: A Mediocre Action Thriller With Grander Asperations

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London Has Fallen is a film that thinks a great deal of itself. It probably had a somewhat swelled sense of it’s self-importance after the moderate box-office success of it’s predecessor, Olympus Has Fallen. It’s kind of like someone who got first in a small town track and field event and thought they were hot stuff and went to nationals still thinking they were the obvious #1. There’s no real surprise about what the storyline is going to be, especially if you’ve seen Olympus; this time, instead of the White House falling prey to a terrorist takeover with secret service agent Mike Banning (played by Gerard Butler) in the right place at the wrong time, it’s London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. Beyond that, it’s a larger scoped version of the same story, with events happening around London rather than just the maze of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The UK’s Prime Minister has suddenly passed away and world leaders are converging on St. Paul’s for the funeral services. This winds up being too tempting of a target for the bad guys (who they happen to be is largely irrelevant – they’re drawn with no more depth than being Pakistani arms dealers). The initial strike is well planned out and exciting to watch. Die Hard’s Hans Gruber would have been proud. Unfortunately once Banning and American President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) manage to avoid the initial onslaught, the contrived cat and mouse that ensues become progressively less and less believable.

The backbone of action films has always been that the protagonist is able to endure superhuman levels of damage and still walk away with barely a limp. 1993’s Last Action Hero’s main running gag was that very aspect. However with the rise of nods towards realism, it becomes more evident when characters keep on going in spite of explosions, falls, and crashes. Both Asher and Banning even manage a spectacular helicopter crash landing but nope, they’re still fine. From the well planned and smooth execution of that first attack, it just spirals down the path of blatantly silly. The downside of it is that the audience winds up caring less and less to the point that there’s no satisfaction whenever the hero manages to outwit or outmaneuver the bad guys – because we know he’ll just skip away. There needs to be at least a facade of danger or risk to the hero, otherwise it becomes dull. And that’s what happens in London is Falling, it goes from exciting to laughable by the end of the second act, and through the third you just start looking at your watch waiting for the film to wrap it up.

Skip this one unless you just really need to see Butler beating up bad guys again. In that case, go for a matinee showing.

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