Part of the appeal of disaster films stems from their blend of spectacle and catharsis. The latest special effects bring sights of trouble and trauma to the screen, propped up by — or sometimes, propping up — scripts that trade in the emotions and extremes surrounding life-and-death situations. Within the movies, landmarks, landmasses, structures and vessels fall apart, and on-screen characters desperately try not to do the same. Within the audience, those watching eat up heightened scenarios and reactions, safe in the knowledge that they’re merely consuming entertainment.
What is there to be made, then, of the president-in-peril subset lurking within the carnage-riddled genre’s midst? The stakes are raised, and with it the film’s patriotic flavour, a result of layering a threat to the head-of-state over the top of explosions and efforts to survive. The similarly themed duo that was 2013’s White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen attempted to inject a nationalistic attitude and elicit a strong response by plaguing the official residence and workplace of America’s leader with a terrorist onslaught. Now, the latter has inspired a sequel that endeavours to continue the catastrophe, coping and jingoism blend on foreign soil.
Brandishing the title London Has Fallen, the feature’s setting is hardly surprising, nor is the fact that more than just the head of the United States is involved. When President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart, I, Frankenstein) is called to the British capital to attend the funeral of the country’s prime minister, he’s not the sole visiting dignitary; however he is the only one with resourceful, no-nonsense Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, Gods of Egypt) in his company. Swiftly after their arrival, a coordinated series of attacks decimates the city, leaving Asher among the few power players left standing. With the perpetrators on their trail — and arms dealer ringleader Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul, Israeli TV’s Mermaids) calling for Asher’s head in a heated exchange with US Vice President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman, Ted 2) — Banning must stop the destruction and save his commander-in-chief.
Anyone familiar with the first feature, with television series 24, or with the usual action movie clichés can easily anticipate the antics that follow as buildings crumble, bad guys rumble, and the film’s hero and his leader scurry throughout the chaos. London Has Fallen largely retraces its predecessor’s footsteps in a different place and with enemies of a different origin — and while that’s a standard sequel move, the feature’s devotion to the formula doesn’t do it any favours. Indeed, though director Babak Najafi (Easy Money II: Hard to Kill) is a deft hand at choreographed displays of devastation, that’s where his successes end. The damage might look convincing, but little else — the squandered supporting cast that includes Melissa Leo (The Big Short), Angela Bassett (American Horror Story), Radha Mitchell (Looking for Grace) and Robert Forster (The Descendants), particularly — earns the same description.
It doesn’t help that returning screenwriters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt (The Expendables 3) and newcomers Christian Gudegast (A Man Apart) and Chad St. John (The Punisher: Dirty Laundry) remain content with straddling the line between gung-ho combat and cheesy comedy, with both approaches furthering the “us versus them” mentality at the movie’s core. If Banning was a thinly drawn symbol of Olympus‘ blatant pro-US stance in his initial outing, he’s even less subtle — and spouting more offensive one-liners at his aggressors — this time around, despite the dripping sentimentality of an expectant father subplot. Cheering and laughing along with him seem to be the intended responses to Butler’s one-note performance, though discomfort is the more likely reaction to the film as a whole. Marrying well-staged mayhem with blinkered flag-waving might be designed to amplify the disaster genre, but given that it proves pointed and cartoonish, it ultimately has the opposite effect.
Rating: 2 stars out of 5
London Has Fallen
Director: Babak Najafi
UK/USA/Bulgaria, 2016, 99 mins
Release date: 17 March
Distributor: Roadshow
Rated: MA
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