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    London Has Fallen

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    I want to be fair with my review of “London has Fallen”. I haven’t seen the first one. I plan on it (found a used DVD for $3) but I came into this sequel not knowing the background of any of the characters. It’s possible that I didn’t get some subtle call backs to the first picture, that I missed mind-blowing moments of character development and heartbreaking revelations because I didn’t see the previous adventures of Mike Banning and President Benjamin Asher… but I sincerely doubt it. This is a bad action movie, and a forgettable one too.

    Following the death of the British Prime Minister, world leaders gather in London, unaware that a ruthless terrorist mastermind, Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul) is leading them into a trap. With the city in chaos, Presidential body guard Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) and President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) are on the run with no idea who is trustworthy.

    People are going to defend this film as a fun popcorn movie: the kind of picture that you apply no genuine thought to and enjoy because there’s a lot of people you hate getting killed and the plot moves quickly. I’ll admit that I did have fun seeing the hero never miss a single shot unless he was shooting in a general direction. I also got a kick out of witnessing Banning kill legions of evil terrorists. But that’s not enough. The film has to be genuinely good and memorable too, it can’t just deliver the bare minimum. Aside from the big scenes where London gets royally kicked in the teeth with explosives, there’s nothing about “London Has Fallen” that makes it stand out.

    I don’t think this sequel delivers in terms of what you want to see in an action picture. There aren’t any memorable lines for instance and the big action scenes are nothing to write home about. Honestly, it felt like I was watching someone else play “Call of Duty”, and that’s no fun. The bad guy? He’s nothing special, just a generic terrorist who wants revenge because his family was killed by the U. S. military. There’s so little time devoted to making the man seem like a human being he turns into a caricature. I’m getting sick of seeing all of these Middle-Eastern terrorists in action films. Couldn’t we get at least a few people with brown skin betraying the villain because they recognize that killing is wrong or something? The most impressive thing about Barkawi is that he has teleportation powers. I know they say that he’s been plotting this for a long time and obviously he’s got hundreds of goombas to do his bidding, but once the carnage begins, all logic goes out the window. The script stops explaining how they managed to figure out where the politicians would be or how they snuck in all those explosives and brought all of those weapons inside London. I was under the impression that it’s incredibly difficult to bring or have guns in the United Kingdom, but what do I know, right? The only conclusion I can come to is that he has superpowers. Not that they’ll help him from the one-man killing machine that is Banning…

    The picture isn’t entirely dreadful. The special effects are good and so are most of the actions scenes, predictable as they might be. Our heroes’ wounds heal after a couple of scenes and nobody can hit him because he kills all of his targets in one shot. If it wasn’t for the fact that he double-taps every single time, he could have taken back the whole city by himself, but being thorough means he only has so much ammo. I was all alone in the theatre. Over and over I found myself yelling at the screen “Pick up a second gun you idiot! That dead guy isn’t going to use it! ”

    The tension in “London Has Fallen” comes from the uncertainty of which cliché the plot is going to go with next.  Spoiler alert - click to reveal textWe learn at the beginning of the movie that Mike’s wife is pregnant and that he’s planning on retiring. Anyone who has seen enough action movies knows those are clear signs that the man is about as dead as a teenager smoking pot and planning on having pre-marital sex at Camp Crystal Lake. But wait a second; he’s the hero! Which way will the coin flip go?

    It’s a good thing I was all by myself in the theatre. Had I not been able to loudly call out the plot points in advance and laugh or comment to my satisfaction on the characters’ actions, this would have been a real chore. Ridiculing this laughable film made it enjoyable in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way. That’s the only way I can recommend you watch this “London Has Fallen”. (Theatrical version on the big screen, March 19, 2016)

    4
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    adamwatchesmovies@  21.3.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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