London Has Fallen (2016)
Directed by Babak Najafi
In London for the Prime Minister's funeral, Mike Banning discovers a plot to assassinate all the attending world leaders.
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It's the sequel to 2013's Olympus Has Fallen, which was itself a spiritual sequel to Die Hard: one building, one terrorist group, too many hostages, and one walkie-talkie-taunting badass who can save the day.
Well maybe not YOU specifically — but because moviegoers around the world contributed to the 2013 “Die Hard” ripoff “Olympus Has Fallen” earning more than $160 million at the box office, we now get a sequel, which as you might have surmised from the title is set mostly in London.
“ Olympus Has Fallen ” was a pornographically violent crapfest that took the standard “ Die Hard ” template, located it within the confines of a White House being attacked by Korean terrorists and tried to use such sights as the White House in flames, hundreds of corpses on the front lawn and the female Secretary of Defense being brutally beaten as the inspiration for the ensuing orgy of shootings, stabbings, neck-breakings and quips delivered by star Gerard Butler.
London Has Fallen is essentially a siege movie, modeled after the greatest siege movie ever made: Die Hard .
London Has Fallen, the sequel to Olympus Has Fallen is simply the latest in the tradition of "Die Hard in a..." films.
It was enough to keep the movie from clicking when it tried to shift into quippy “Die Hard” mode.
Air Force One was Die Hard on a very specific plane — the president’s personal 747.
But the action-sequel "London Has Fallen" -- a breathless narrative mashup of "Die Hard" and "Air Force One" -- comes close.
As with 'Olympus,' 'London' is akin to an indelicate, more vicious riff on “Air Force One,” with the Commander-in-Chief relegated to a damsel in distress — Eckhart’s Asher does more fighting this time around, but he’s still ultimately in need of rescuing — and America’s finest military man, Banning, envisioned as a noble macho deity.
London Has Fallen, meanwhile, is more like The Warriors-meets-Air Force One.
“London Has Fallen,” the sequel to 2013’s modest hit “Olympus Has Fallen,” finds Butler back as the toughest Secret Service agent since Clint Eastwood’s Frank Horrigan from “In the Line of Fire.”
One of the cheapest looking $100 million movies ever made, this sequel to the 2013 sort-of-hit Olympus Has Fallen ditches the original’s “Die Hard in the White House” premise in favor of sub- Death Wish 3 sadism and Red Dawn -esque survivalism, but without the notes of camp or jingoist pulp that could make either watchable.
It’s a right-wing ’80s fantasy on the order of “Rambo III” and “Death Wish 3,” in which only a lone, politically incorrect badass with perfect aim and unlimited ammo can save us from carnage that seems like a Breitbart wet dream.
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Even Die Hard’s initial sequels were born of the same lineage: Die Hard 2, adapted from a novel that had nothing to do with the Die Hard franchise, was just Die Hard at an airport.
Arriving roughly three years after its progenitor, Olympus Has Fallen, surprised everyone, and particularly the makers of White House Down, by grossing $161 million worldwide, this budget-conscious high-octane action piece verily zips along at such a fierce clip that it's over practically before you know it.
A truly odious work, it wasn’t even the best White House-set “Die Hard” knock-off released in 2013—the Channing Tatum / Jamie Foxx vehicle “White House Down” was an infinitely better film that didn't make you feel as if you needed a shower afterwards—but, presumably because it happened to come out first, it was the more successful of the two films.
In 2013, director Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen (in which Gerard Butler protected President Aaron Eckhart) won the battle of the competing terrorists-attack-the-White-House thrillers, trouncing the far superior, infinitely more fun White House Down (in which Channing Tatum protected President Jamie Foxx) at the box office, and making a sequel a depressing inevitability.
I eventually watched “Olympus Has Fallen” about the same time I caught “White House Down.”
2013’s Olympus Has Fallen was expected to play second fiddle in the “Die Hard in the White House” duel to the bigger budget, higher star power, and box-office friendly PG-13 rating of Roland Emmerich’s White House Down, but Antoine Fuqua’s cheaper, grittier bloodbath prevailed.
Speed was Die Hard on a bus; its lackluster sequel was Die Hard on a cruise ship.
The latter’s turn as former CIA agent Bryan Mills in the Taken series has not only spawned an avalanche of Neeson memes , it’s also traded in some very typical and damaging Hollywood tropes, starting with Eastern European sex traffickers selling off his daughter to the highest Arab bidder .
We saw it with the Taken films, and with the loss of veteran Antoine Fuqua in favor of newcomer Babak Najafi, it seemed as though history was quick to repeat itself.
Look how many times Liam Neeson profited by misplacing his daughter in the Taken franchise.
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The story really only acts as an excuse to plop Butler and company in front of more dudes with guns, with character interactions that feel more ripped out of a Team America: World Police style parody of action cinema than a real film.
London Has Fallen: it’s Team America: World Police but without the irony.
I just can’t help thinking the makers of this movie didn’t realize Team America: World Police was a satire.
It's nationalistic nonsense from start to finish, calibrated to maintain such a fever pitch of patriotism that it makes Team America: World Police look like Communist propaganda by comparison.
Sudden Death was Die Hard in a hockey stadium.