I could be wrong, but I think in the entire duration of watching London Has Fallen, I never once saw Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) kill a white man. Would it have been too confusing to have a multiracial terrorist group? Olympus Has Fallen, the prequel to this film, had plenty of white people dying. So in a film that is blatantly racist, and absolutely refuses to take its sights off of the Middle East, why did I have so much fun watching Butler kill terrorist after terrorist? The magic of London Has Fallen is that its gleeful racism makes it into an absurdity – a shaken B-movie martini containing Republican fears and psychopathic violence.
Olympus Has Fallen was big for me. It came out of nowhere and managed to have great action with hilariously bad one-liners. Its dialogue was the stuff you’d find in parodies of action films, but it wasn’t a parody at all. It took itself so seriously unlike its competition for White-House-invasion-movie-of-the-year, White House Down. London Has Fallen is no different from its predecessor, and instead leans into its quirks even harder without ever batting an eyelash. Let’s get right down to what people will want to know, though…how is this movie so offensive?
Well, we can touch on that by focusing on the story, which tries to justify its racism under a plot of vengeance. The American President said okay to a drone strike that killed Aamir Barkawi’s (Alon Aboutboul) daughter, as well as plenty of other innocent civilians. So in an act of vengeance, Barkawi planned an elaborate assassination attempt that involved taking out many of the world’s leaders at the funeral of the British Prime Minister. So I mean, there’s some justification for many of the villains to be of Middle Eastern-descent. Few countries would probably want to jump into a war against the entire world, so it makes some sense that Barkawi would gather an army of militias he knows, which happen to all be located in Middle Eastern nations.
What doesn’t make sense is how a cold-blooded, stone-faced, racist killer like Mike Banning would be allowed to serve for a President without being called out on his actions. Take the line “go back to Fuckhead-istan” (I wish I was paraphrasing) where Banning establishes himself as extremely racist. Or the very abrasive final speech Banning gives to one of the major villains, explaining America’s perseverance through terrorist attacks, which basically reads out “Hell yeah, America!” in the least subtle way possible. I’ve told you now how offensive the film is, but what I haven’t told you yet is how much fun it ends up being.
Banning refuses to not use a knife in close-range combat. It’s his “thing,” and he isn’t afraid who knows it. He swings a piece of wood at an unsuspecting enemy, hitting him right in the throat causing him to writhe on the ground suffocating to death. “I’ve never seen a man suffocate to death before” exclaims panicked President Asher (Aaron Eckhart), to which Banning retorts “I didn’t have my knife.” He crawls out from under a burning car and stabs an enemy lying on the ground an excessive amount – an enemy already suffering from a gunshot to the leg. When asked if slowly torturing a terrorist with his knife is necessary, Banning simply replies “No.”
This kind of psychopathic nature will put off a lot of people, but it works so well under the direction of Babak Najafi. Yes, the violence is over-the-top and brutal, but it never feels out of place from the already outlandish plot. London Has Fallen is a dark movie, too. It somehow manages to keep a tone of savagery and devastation constantly in the background, while Butler and Eckhart exchange terribly preposterous dialogue and kill people in ridiculously gruesome ways. It helps that because of Banning’s psychotic violence and unstoppable nature, the film gets to have a plethora of action scenes ranging from helicopter chases to car chases to a faux one-shot sequence involving Banning tactically removing terrorists while avoiding a barrage of enemy fire.
Not all of the action is great, though. The one-shot sequence doesn’t quite have enough excitement to it, which is unfortunate. There’s a night-vision first-person scene that is jarring because it is constantly swapping between dark, third-person camerawork to extremely green first-person action. It makes it difficult to track some of the action happening, but it also highlights just how creative the action can become. My major issues with the film come from the beginning of the movie’s severe lack of action. It’s just a lot of Banning at home, which I did not sign up for. I signed up for Morgan Freeman exclaiming “London has fallen!” which I also didn’t get, but it’s fine, I’ve come to terms with the omission.
If you’ve never seen a B-movie like this from the 80s or 90s, then it is easy to see why London Has Fallen would not work for you. It doesn’t look at the audience and knowingly wink, but instead, it seems to expect the audience to wink for them. And by god, did I ever wink. I don’t know how much of London Has Fallen was intentional, but based on Olympus Has Fallen and why that movie was so great, it seems like this film just decided to crank everything to 11. Sure, you have to sit through roughly 20 minutes of set-up, but once you get past that you get a lot of corny dialogue wrapped up in the warmest blanket of human entrails. It really is the greatest gift to action fans.