London Has Fallen. (15.)
Directed by Babk Najafi.
Starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Charlotte Riley, Angela Bassett and Colin Salmon. 99 mins
Flying a US President (Eckhart) into London for the state funeral of the British PM would always be a risky assignment. But in London Has Fallen the POTUS is flying into a Donald Trump foreign policy fever dream – this is not just a London where the police are afraid to patrol certain areas because they are dominated by Islamic militants; this is a London where half the police force and even some paramedics are part of a vast plan to assassinate him and all the other tinpot caricatures of world leaders.
Luckily he is escorted by his trusted secret service guy Mike Banning. Unluckily, Banning is still played by Gerard Butler, the Audley Harrison of action movie tough guys. Yeah, he growls his dialogue and looks beefy in a puffed up way, but if he was the bull my money would be on the china shop. In the first Has Fallen film, Olympus, he was a disgraced former secret service guy who saves the President from an attack on the White House: like Bruce in Die Hard he was the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Not a stretch for Butler; he must feel like that most of the time. When is he the right man in the right place at the right time? What is he actually good at? From romcoms, to action roles, to prancing around in scent advertisements, he always seems faintly ludicrous. This innate buffoonery does mean that he is an instinctively funny performer – except when he actually has something funny to say.
The hostile reception the president receives in London is nothing on the reception it received at the screening I attended where the audience were guffawing at it right from the off, so much so that I felt a little protective of it. Still, I had to snort derisively when the secret service boss Angela Bassett, sitting in a helicopter above a smoldering London where hundreds lay dead, concludes, “It is a trap.” It's not that bad, it is only moderately inept. Mostly it is like an uninspired rehash of scenes from various seasons of 24. Nothing in it makes much sense, particularly the decision to hire actors like Robert Forster and Jackie Earle Haley to sit next to Vice President Freeman in the surprising pokey US operation room and barely give them a line. Oscar winner Melissa Leo is there too, employed just to quiver.
More Gerard Butler films reviewed:
Coriolanus
PS I Love You
300,
Rocknrolla,
London Has Fallen. (15.)
Directed by Babk Najafi.
Starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Charlotte Riley, Angela Bassett and Colin Salmon. 99 mins
Flying a US President (Eckhart) into London for the state funeral of the British PM would always be a risky assignment. But in London Has Fallen the POTUS is flying into a Donald Trump foreign policy fever dream – this is not just a London where the police are afraid to patrol certain areas because they are dominated by Islamic militants; this is a London where half the police force and even some paramedics are part of a vast plan to assassinate him and all the other tinpot caricatures of world leaders.
Luckily he is escorted by his trusted secret service guy Mike Banning. Unluckily, Banning is still played by Gerard Butler, the Audley Harrison of action movie tough guys. Yeah, he growls his dialogue and looks beefy in a puffed up way, but if he was the bull my money would be on the china shop. In the first Has Fallen film, Olympus, he was a disgraced former secret service guy who saves the President from an attack on the White House: like Bruce in Die Hard he was the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Not a stretch for Butler; he must feel like that most of the time. When is he the right man in the right place at the right time? What is he actually good at? From romcoms, to action roles, to prancing around in scent advertisements, he always seems faintly ludicrous. This innate buffoonery does mean that he is an instinctively funny performer – except when he actually has something funny to say.
The hostile reception the president receives in London is nothing on the reception it received at the screening I attended where the audience were guffawing at it right from the off, so much so that I felt a little protective of it. Still, I had to snort derisively when the secret service boss Angela Bassett, sitting in a helicopter above a smoldering London where hundreds lay dead, concludes, “It is a trap.” It's not that bad, it is only moderately inept. Mostly it is like an uninspired rehash of scenes from various seasons of 24. Nothing in it makes much sense, particularly the decision to hire actors like Robert Forster and Jackie Earle Haley to sit next to Vice President Freeman in the surprising pokey US operation room and barely give them a line. Oscar winner Melissa Leo is there too, employed just to quiver.
More Gerard Butler films reviewed:
Coriolanus
PS I Love You
300,
Rocknrolla,
