LONDON HAS FALLEN (2016) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

london has fallen (2016) movie

Genre               |   Action

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |  98 minutes

Released         |   17 March 2016

cast

Gerard Butler as Mike Banning
Aaron Eckhart as Benjamin Asher
Angela Bassett as Lynne Jacobs
​Morgan Freeman as Allan Trumbull

director

Babak Najafi

writer

Creighton Rothenberger ... (based on characters created by) &
Katrin Benedikt ... (based on characters created by)
 
Creighton Rothenberger ... (story by) &
Katrin Benedikt ... (story by)
 
Creighton Rothenberger ... (screenplay by) &
Katrin Benedikt ... (screenplay by) and
Christian Gudegast ... (screenplay by) and
Chad St. John ... (screenplay by)
 
Seth M. Sherwood ... (writer) (uncredited)

cinematographer

​Ed Wild

music

​Trevor Morris

film editor

Michael J. Duthie ... (as Michael Duthie)
Paul Martin Smith ​

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box office result

Worldwide             $205,754,447  

Australia                 ​$4,495,818

North America       $62,524,260 ​   

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the best dialogue

Mike Banning: [fighting Kamran] You know what you assholes don't get? We're not a fucking building! We're not a fucking flag! We're not just one man! Assholes like you have been trying to kill us for a long fucking time. But you know what? A thousand years from now, we'll still fucking be here!

Benjamin Asher: [out jogging] What are you made of?
Mike Banning: [starts running backwards] Burbon and poor choices sir

Aamir Barkawi: You think this war, this war that you started, you think it's over? I'll dedicate my life to your death. This war will not end.
VP Trumbull: Maybe you should look out your window.

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LONDON HAS FALLEN (2016) IMAGES

LONDON HAS FALLEN (2016) STORY SYNOPSIS

​After the British Prime Minister has passed away under mysterious circumstances, all leaders of the Western world must attend his funeral. But what starts out as the most protected event on earth, turns into a deadly plot to kill the world's most powerful leaders and unleash a terrifying vision of the future. The President of the United States, his formidable secret service head and a British MI-6 agent who trusts no one are the only people that have any hope of stopping it.

LONDON HAS FALLEN (2016) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 15 March 2016
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐

LONDON HAS FALLEN takes the meaning of contrived to a whole level, as Gerard Butler slugs, knifes and shoots his way through a cavalcade of one-note bad guys in the name of protecting Aaron Eckhart’s American President. Babak Najafi fills the Director’s shoes in Butler’s second outing as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning. Najafi doesn’t bring any great innovation to the Action genre with LONDON HAS FALLEN; preferring to plough his way through the material and showcase Butler’s ambition to be the movie star that the Scottish thespian still hasn’t quite fulfilled. If you’re looking for a high quality action film that sets itself apart from the pack, you’re going to be disappointed by this one. If, on the other hand, you’re happy with 99 minutes of thoughtlessness , in a manner akin to the cinematic vehicles of yester-year’s B-grade action stars Jean Claude Van Damme & Steven Seagal, then LONDON HAS FALLEN might just be the movie for you!

LONDON HAS FALLEN opens with a prologue that sets the wheels-in-motion for events that unfold later, with an American drone strike on Arms Dealer Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul). Unknown to the American military commanders is their strike kills Barkawi’s daughter on her wedding day at their family’s desert compound. The story jumps ahead two years to find Mike Banning contemplating his future as a Secret Service Agent with the impending arrival of his first child. Before he can advise Eckhart’s President Asher of his decision to quit, Banning is required to accompany the POTUS to the funeral of the British Prime Minister, who has apparently died suddenly. Banning and Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett) raise concerns that the lack of preparation and the log-jam of other world leaders attending the funeral will create a logistical nightmare for the President’s safety. As Asher and his entourage prepare to go to London, the script wheels out Morgan Freeman’s Vice-President Allan Trumbull - yet another carry-over character from the first film. His presence all but spells DOOM, as the audience all know that Morgan Freeman is the best equipped man you want running the show when you’re President has checked out of the action!


Like clockwork, LONDON HAS FALLEN ticks off the genre tropes as the thin plot stretches to breaking point; barely managing to keep the characters motivated enough to get from one set-piece to the next. Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, who were the perpetrators of the first film’s script, provided the story and at least one version of the screenplay for LONDON HAS FALLEN, but Christian Gudegast and Chad St. John also had a crack at it (as evidenced by the WGA credits). The result is a film that spends a lot of time servicing its leading man and wastes a whole lot of other talent in bit parts that add little to no value to the story. Butler’s antics are a given, and he’s mildly entertaining with his piss-poor one liners, but the likes of Angela Bassett, Jackie Earle Haley, Robert Forster, Morgan Freeman and, to a certain extent, even Aaron Eckhart are wasted. Butler’s Banning becomes a one man show where everything centres around whatever it is he’ll think of next to combat the terrorists who, up to encountering him, have managed to find their way through or around every other civilian and military authority in the world.

There’s nothing like good old American jingoism and it’s even better when it’s delivered by a Scotsman who’s not quite perfected his American accent. Perhaps there’s a certain irony that point and, maybe, Gerard Butler is sitting at home right at this very minute having the last laugh...However, there’s nothing subtle about LONDON HAS FALLEN and the laundry list of coincidence that serves as a story make it feel like a cheesy rip-off of all the best Action flicks of the last 15 years (especially in the Spy-Fi sub-genre) drizzled with a thin veneer of “name” acting talent to try and help sell it is as an above-average entry. The reality is not so flattering. It’s average at best and, at times, lapses into sheer dross. Among the film’s biggest problems is its CGI work, which has some of the poorest execution seen in a film for quite some time. For a film that needs the viewer to believe that the destruction of London is real and tangible, some of the visual effects are just plain ghastly in terms of their poor quality. London HAS fallen, but not quite the way the film’s producers may have hoped.

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