London Has Fallen (2016)

Genre

Action | Thriller

Director

Babak Najafi

Country

USA

Cast

Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Alon Moni Aboutboul, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Charlotte Riley, Jackie Earle Haley, Sean O'Bryan, Waleed Zuaiter, Mehdi Dehbi, Colin Salmon

Storyline

In London for the Prime Minister's funeral, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) discovers a plot to assassinate all the attending world leaders.

Opinion

After establishing that "White House Down" was better than "Olympus Has Fallen", the one getting a sequel was of course the latter because, you know, Hollywood does that kind of things. An what a great accomplishment, they even managed to make a film worse than the original.

"London Has Fallen" indeed is a dreadfully appalling action film - or is it supposed to be a parody? - that traps the viewer in nothing but an endless vortex of clichés of the genre.

Okay, I'm taking the cliché part back because, after demolishing the White House and thinking it would have been cool to destroy London, the writers didn't do a lot of writing. All they did was basically copy and paste "Olympus Has Fallen". The only difference is that London isn't a code, but the actual city where the film takes place.

And oh god the plot. It is terrible. Actually no, it's not terrible, that would require a plot. Other than being utterly unoriginal and predictable, and stupid let's not forget that, that thing that is supposed to be the plot is filled with holes and nothing but action sequences interspersed with tedious dead moments.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the action is good. Unless you consider confused action sequences good stuff, in that case this film's action is Oscar worthy. I don't know how that's even possible, but those chasing, fighting, shooting scenes are incredibly boring.

Another mystery is how, in the year 2016, they managed to make such a poor use of special effects. The film looks like a damn video game. Seriously, the CGI is so poor it's laughable.

And at last but not least the cast, especially the leads, who is trapped in this horrible film, just like us. And that brings me to another question? What on earth were they thinking when they signed to make this film?