London Has Fallen

SPOILER-FREE MOVIE REVIEW

London Has Fallen is the sequel to 2013's surprisingly entertaining and commercially successful political action thriller Olympus Has Fallen.

It sees Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman (along with a few others) reprising their roles as Special Agent Mike Banning, President of the United States Benjamin Asher and Vice-President Allan Trumbull respectively.

This time around, it's not the White House that comes under attack by terrorists but the entire city of London in an act of revenge for things done unto them in the past.

I felt that this movie had excellent entertainment value.

From the start, you already know that the movie isn't trying to be some super sophisticated espionage thriller.

That aids the movie's cause as it doesn't try to be anything too overly-ambitious.

The story was simple to follow and easy to navigate through - noticeably simpler than the plot of the previous movie which involved nukes and all that jazz.

I quite liked that smaller-scale problem which plagues our heroes in this movie, even though an entire city comes under fire instead of just one building in the form of the White House.

I say that because the movie just doesn't make the threat towards an entire city that gripping. Many would view that as a bad thing but for me, I quite liked it.

Sure, the terrorists do cause plenty of damage to London, but the movie focuses more on Banning (Gerard Butler) and his quest to bringing President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) to safety. I liked that very much because it made room for more explosive action.

On to the parts I liked most about this new instalment.

I really liked the main characters and their development from the previous movie. In particular, Banning and the President.

Those two were good buddies in the previous movie, and the terrific chemistry between Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart just makes the bond between the two in this one even more realistic and legitimate.

I liked the banter the two had between each other as well, where they always have that back-and-forth teasing just for the fun of it.

Specific praise has to go to Gerard Butler too, who is even more of a badass in this one.

It's refreshing to see that the Dirty Harry-type badass gun-toting cop-who-doesn't-follow-orders is still around.

The action sequences were all pretty top-notch, and had a good blend of simple all-out explosion fests and the more tense stealth scenes.

These were helped tremendously by the excellent score by Trevor Morris.

I remember thinking to myself during the movie that this movie's soundtrack was really impressive, and that the music was far more memorable than the soundtrack for Olympus Has Fallen (which was quite forgettable).

The camera work was pretty decent, with one impressive scene in particular which is made to look like one continuous take involving Gerard Butler and a lot of ammunition.

It's like a thing in Hollywood nowadays, the whole "one continuous take" thing. It all started when Birdman was released in 2014.

I quite like the fact that it's a thing now, cos I am a big fan of the technique. The fact that they used it in a movie like this which doesn't need such complex filming techniques shows that a lot of thought was given to the movie, and that's always a good thing.

Direction-wise, I felt that director Babak Najafi (who replaced Antoine Fuqua) did a decent job, although some bits of the story could have been told better like the handling of the sub-plots and the ending of the movie.

If I were to compare with Fuqua's direction in Olympus, I'd say his was superior to Najafi's simply because of the focus on more scenes which build suspense instead of all-out action sequences.

For the not-so-good parts, I'll start with the movie's visuals.

The visual effects and the CGI were pretty disappointing throughout, and you can kind of tell at times that maybe they just ran out of budget from all the boom boom to make the CGI bits look more realistic.

I didn't like the way the British cast was handled, as they had far too little screen time for them to make any impact whatsoever. Furthermore, they lacked any form of character development.

On a side note, it was nice to see good old Colin Salmon (who plays Chief Inspector Kevin Hazard) on the big screen - alumnus from the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films from 1997 to 2002.

There's this character of MI6's best agent Jax Marshall (Charlotte Riley) whom I felt could have had a lot more to do in the movie instead of what she was given. It's a sad waste that they didn't even feature her much. Shame.

There was also this sub-plot featuring the MI5 Intelligence Chief (Patrick Kennedy) which could have made for an interesting twist in the tale, given how crucial that small bit is to the events of the movie happening.

I felt that they could have at the very least featured more of the character and of that little story instead of just showing glimpses in an attempt to make the audience more "shocked" when the truth is finally revealed. That effect backfires as the character just isn't featured enough for the audience to even care.

At times, the movie is also a little cliché, but that's alright as it's sort of what one would come to expect from an action movie like this.

Many critics have said that this movie (along with the previous one) belongs in the late 80's or 90's where action movies like these were released every other day. They also say that this movie isn't good.

I have to disagree, as those movies in those days were pretty bad, with only a couple emerging as good entertainment.

These two Fallen movies are both pretty enjoyable, and are both terrific entertainment.

All in all, London Has Fallen was a very enjoyable movie.

How does it compare to Olympus? Well, it's not as suspenseful, but it is on-par in terms of action and badassery. Maybe even a bit better for the latter.

I think it's on-par with the previous instalment.

What London Has Fallen is is a simple yet solid, no-nonsense action thriller with all the elements you'd come to expect from a suspenseful action movie present.

The cast is good and the story is simple, leaving room for more awesome action sequences to be included.

Sadly, the movie is let down greatly by poor visual effects, bad handling of a few key sub-plots as well as the lack of screen time for the British characters who could have offered so much more than they were given.

6.5/10.