By Preston Wilder
Our suspicious, culture-of-fear Western zeitgeist gets a proper airing in London Has Fallen, a lively action thriller that might’ve been titled ‘Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean the Terrorists Aren’t Everywhere’. Many years from now it’ll surely seem ridiculous (or even more ridiculous than it does now), much like films from the 50s now amuse us with their Reds-under-the-bed anti-Communist hysteria. Either that, or we’ll all be wearing djellabas and praying to Mecca five times a day.
“These guys are everywhere” is the actual quote by Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), chief bodyguard and right-hand man to US President Ben Asher (Aaron Eckhart, not looking much like Obama). Mike is paranoid, installing six baby monitors to watch over his still-unborn child even as his wife points out that one camera is probably enough – and he brings the same better-safe-than-sorry attitude to his job, which comes in handy when London falls as per the title. We can all learn something from his seething paranoia.
How does London fall? Well, let’s see. In real life, British Home Secretary Theresa May – justifying her actions with the same kind of fear and loathing espoused by the movie – is currently seeking to pass the so-called Snooper’s Charter, allowing the state to monitor a year’s worth of social media, internet browsing, email correspondence and text messages, i.e. everything except face-to-face meetings (which are mostly monitored by CCTV anyway). In the world of the movie, however, hundreds of terrorists manage to converge on the capital, planting bombs and impersonating Beefeaters – not to mention assassinating world leaders – without MI5 or the NSA having any inkling that such a massive operation is being planned. In fact, it gets so bad – there are so many terrorists on the street, all dressed as cops – that the only solution is to withdraw all the real cops, on the theory that whoever’s left will be a bad guy. Yes of course, that’s an excellent plan.
Even by the standards of such things, London Has Fallen is hilariously unlikely. It’s also reprehensible, claiming that we’re living in “the most dangerous time since the Great War” (granted, that line is spoken by a traitor) and having the US Vice-President – played by Morgan Freeman, no less – intone that we need to “engage” with the enemy, justifying even more drone attacks and foreign intervention. One thing it’s not, however, is boring. The film whips along entertainingly, with Iranian-born director Babak Najafi wisely deciding to embrace the absurdity, not make excuses for any of it, and play the whole thing at a pace of knots.
Wall-to-wall action felt like a soul-crushing cop-out in Gods of Egypt last week – but this is different. For one thing, the action isn’t incoherent but seems to flow naturally; for another, there’s enough personality – mostly in the byplay between Banning and his presidential charge – to make it feel like there’s something at stake. The other thing the films have in common is Gerard Butler, increasingly a force of Nature if not exactly a subtle one: “I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty as f**k!” he declares at one point, and gulps down a full glass of water in a scene that has no narrative function except to illustrate his animal energy. Butler’s pub-brawl machismo – “made out of bourbon and poor choices,” or so he says – functions like Charles Bronson’s famous blankness in the very similar films he made in the 80s, a cartoonish monomania imposed on the audience by sheer force of will. You can’t go in there, says Scotland Yard, “there are nearly 100 terrorists there”. “Yeah? Well, they should’ve brought more men!” snarls our hero. Spartaaaaaa!
The mix of pace, preposterousness and Butler’s belligerence – plus some surprisingly graphic violence – works well, in B-movie fashion. And there’s something else too. London Has Fallen is the sequel to Olympus Has Fallen, a so-so action flick that was wholly outclassed in the White-House-invasion stakes by the same year’s White House Down, with Jamie Foxx as a rocket-launcher-toting Obama – and London takes a lesson from White House Down in making the President more a sidekick than a Chief Executive. He and Mike banter, exchange friendly insults, and the Prez even saves our hero’s life, emerging from his hiding place to plant a bullet in a baddie. “I was wondering when you were going to come out of the closet,” chuckles Banning. “That’s not funny!” snaps the President, not about to let a terrorist crisis get in the way of his gay panic.
This is a film where world leaders attend a state funeral and behave like comic stereotypes, so for instance the Italian PM (‘Antonio Gusto’) slinks off to Westminster Abbey for a tryst with his young trophy wife. This is a film where the elusive supervillain calls the White House directly and chats with the Vice-President – yet no-one is able to track his whereabouts. This is a film where Gerard Butler declares that everyone’s “a terrorist asshole till proven otherwise”, in between leaning out of a speeding car to shoot some jihadists and ducking behind a wall to escape a hurtling fireball. Future generations will laugh, unless of course they can’t even follow it without Arabic subtitles.
DIRECTED BY Babak Najafi
STARRING Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman
US/UK 2016 99 mins
