Cinemavenger

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London Has Fallen

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than London Has Fallen  might as well be on its knees slobbering all over Die Hard's dick.  Sure, London Has Fallen isn't the first - or even 50th - Die Hard ripoff.  For fuck's sake, it's a sequel to another Die Hard salad tosser, Olympus Has Fallen.

But come the fuck on!  It's been nearly 30 years since John McClane yippee-ki-yay'd Hans Gruber's eurotrash ass off of Nakatomi Tower.  Shouldn't there be a rule that if someone pitches you Die Hard "on a . . ." or "in a . . ." or "under a . . ." at this point they automatically lose their Hollywood privileges and have to clean Denny's bathrooms in Chattanooga for a year as penance?

Where Olympus Has Fallen was "Die Hard at the White House" with the President (Aaron "Amelia" Eckhart) under siege in D.C. and his only hope of survival was quick-witted, tough guy Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard "What What In The" Butler), London Has Fallen is "Die Hard in London," the City That's Never Been to a Dentist.

Arms-dealing quasi-jihadist Aamir Barkawi (Alon "Musk" Aboutboul) has his beard in a bunch because a drone strike aimed at him killed his daughter on her wedding day.  Which I'm sure, given how often this particular terrorist motivation has been used in TV and movies over the past few years, has someone at the CIA saying, "Yeesh!  You blow up one Pashtun wedding . . . ."

Barkawi manages not only to lure every major world leader to London but also to place his men inside the London Police, Scotland Yard, MI5, the Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace, emergency services and, probably, fish and chips shops, Jack the Ripper tours and the stage crew at the fucking Globe.  Like killing a camel with an ICBM, Barkawi does all of this so that he can capture and behead the President live on the Interwebs.

But not if Mike Banning has anything to say about it.  He's gonna send these sand-snorters back to "Fuckheadistan."  America, fuck yeah!

After setting up all the Screenplay 101 cliches - our hero having his first baby on the way, the nursery at home not yet finished, his resignation letter drafted but unsent, the trip to London being his "one last job," blah fucking blah blah - Banning proceeds to shoot, punch, choke, explode and (his personal favorite) stab his way through dozens of would be Oswalds.  Banning loves him some stabbing.  He does it so much his knife belongs next to Rambo's in the Combat Cutlery Hall of Fame.

A London bridge does, in fact, fall down, and Butler mostly manages to keep his Scottish accent under his kilt - something he didn't even bother trying to do in last week's Gods of Egypt - but the rest of London Has Fallen is about as much fun as a soccer riot.

March 6, 2016