"London Has Fallen" Review

Gerard Butler returns to fight off the brown people once again in London Has Fallen, the sequel nobody asked for to the 2013 B-movie that wasn't quite as godawful as expected - Olympus Has Fallen. 

London sees President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) attending the Prime Minister's state funeral in the English capitol. Along for the trip is President Asher's top Secret Service man Mike Banning (Butler). What first appears to be an idyllic day quickly devolves into bloodshed and tragedy as a covert terrorist organization executes a master plan to assassinate every world leader in attendance at the funeral. Stranded with no communication and very few resources, Banning and Asher do everything they can to stay alive while also striking back against those responsible.

Featuring mindless violence, tacky special effects, and cornball acting, there's no discernible reason why London should have been anything other than a straight-to-DVD release, let alone made in the first place. As Butler pops headshots and grumbles that the mean brown people should all crawl back to "Fuckheadistan," it becomes clear what kind of audience this was made for:

Red-blooded 'Muricans.

Donald Drumpf supporters

Fans of unintelligible, incoherent filmmaking will love London. Less discerning viewers may also fail to see the movie's blatant xenophobic message. Standing over a slew of dead brown bodies, at one point Banning actually utters to the president that "every one of these guys is a terrorist until proven otherwise." Yeah, right. Take one guess as to who gets to play judge, jury and executioner in this case.

Adding a perplexing degree of irony, if nothing else, to this heap is the fact that the director is an Iranian refugee. Babak Najafi replaces Antoine Fuqua as the helmer of a film in which hundreds of his own people are made out to be slaughtered in the name of the Red, White and Blue. My question is "why agree to make such a movie?" The fact that the film is just not well-crafted to begin with - plus the jingoism and xenophobia - is enough to question Najafi's credibility as a filmmaker. (Olympus was at least technically competent, if not necessarily a "good" movie.) These are messages and larger issues that deserve to be discussed and explored perhaps by more subtle hands.

Even if you think you're a fan of mindless action films, please stay away from London Has Fallen.

F