Stream It Or Skip It: ‘London Has Fallen’ on Netflix, The Louder, Dumber Sequel To ‘Olympus Has Fallen’

The 2013 film Olympus Has Fallen really leaned into its preposterous “Die Hard in the White House” premise, and benefitted from the sure hand of veteran action movie director Antoine Fuqua. It also made a shitload of money, which pretty much guaranteed a sequel. In 2016’s London Has Fallen, it’s once again up to hard-charging Secret Service agent Mike Banning to save President Benjamin Asher’s neck, this time from a band of terrorists bent on assassinating the world’s leaders as they attend the funeral of the British Prime Minister. 

LONDON HAS FALLEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: When a drone strike kills his family, arms trafficking Pakistani terrorist Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul) carries out an elaborate plan for vengeance that includes poisoning the Prime Minister of Great Britain but making it appear he died from natural causes, luring a host of world leaders to London for the PM’s funeral, accessing those leaders’ top secret routes of travel and precise locations, and arranging for seemingly hundreds of his infiltrators in law enforcement and emergency services to be lying in wait and ready with weapons and bombs to wreak havoc in one of the most surveilled cities on earth. Of course all of this goes off without a hitch. “What’s wrong?” one of his men asks Secret Service agent Mike Bannon (Gerard Butler) as they’re ferrying President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) through a secure motorcade. “Nothing,” he answers, his eyes narrowed. “And that bugs the shit of me.” 

Moments later, assailants dressed as cops, ambulance drivers, army guys, and even Queen’s Guards in their tall bearskin hats are attacking the gathered dignitaries from all sides. The leaders of Japan and France are killed, bridges collapse, and explosives decapitate Westminster Abbey. Banning and Asher escape with Secret Service director Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett) to Marine One, but the presidential chopper and its escorts are targeted by more mercs with Stinger missiles, firing from the roofs of buildings in broad daylight in a downtown London under tight security cordon. The helicopter crash-lands in Hyde Park, killing everyone but Banning and Asher, and they flee on foot as another batch of attackers approach on motorbikes. Mere minutes have passed since this all started, but the city is somehow entirely empty.

As Banning and Asher are picking their way through the London Underground, Vice President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) is tracking the attacks from the White House Situation Room. Joining him are Robert Forster as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jackie Earle Haley as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Melissa Leo as the Secretary of Defense, top flight actors who have nothing to do but stare at telephones and furrow their brows. And back in England, Metropolitan Police boss Kevin Hazard (Colin Salmon) is equally powerless. He gapes at the bank of surveillance monitors which inexplicably missed acquiring a bunch of guys toting surface-to-air missile launchers.

Banning dispatches a few terrorists with bullets, bad words, and casual racism before getting Asher to an MI6 safehouse operated by Agent “Jax” Marshall (Charlotte Riley), but it’s not safe at all because puppet master Barkawi has his guys attack disguised as US Army Delta Force operators. Asher is captured and brought to the terrorists’ hideout, where they plan to stream his death on YouTube. By now, Banning has squads and squads of SAS special forces soldiers with him outside the terrorist den. But he goes in alone to rescue the Prez.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? London Has Fallen is built on the frame of Olympus Has Fallen, which was built on the one man army frame of Die Hard. And considering their success – Olympus and London have together banked over $300 million in box office – these films have spawned an entire Has Fallen universe. Angel Has Fallen appeared in 2019, and there are plans for a fourth film and small screen spin-offs.

Performance Worth Watching: The Has Fallen films are not known for their sensitivities to issues of race, and their brand of violence is broad and empty. But Gerard Butler nevertheless turns in another solid performance as Mike Banning. His character is one dimensional as hell. But Butler’s trademark snarl is perfect for these films, and at times it helps elevate them to the status of capable genre exercise.

Memorable Dialogue: “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!” Brute force nationalism and potty mouth blather: Mike Banning is gonna swear your ass to death.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The escalating implausibility of London Has Fallen is such that it stops caring about its own plot somewhere around its middle third. That’s right around when the supposedly secure MI6 safehouse that’s sheltering Mike Banning and President Asher is suddenly revealed to have a basic-ass deadbolt on its front door and a conventional skylight perfect for mercenaries in tactical gear to rappel through, guns blazing. Naturally, they’re all dispatched by the everywhere-at-once heroics of Banning. And when he can’t prevent Asher’s eventual abduction, it’s just another opportunity for the one man wrecking crew, no matter that he now has a crew of SAS hard guys at his disposal. What London Has Fallen is really terrific at is shedding any character that isn’t its central duo of protector and president. It feels like Jax, Charlotte Riley’s MI6 agent, wanders in from an entirely different film, then wanders out. And the braintrust back in the US, a group that includes the esteemed talents of Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo, and Robert Forster, literally never leaves the Situation Room. Together they field phone calls from supposed terrorist mastermind Barkawi, whose apparent means and menace are only more mechanisms to spin Bannon into action. Barkawi’s exact aim with all of this mayhem is only vaguely referenced, and its connection to a corrupt high-ranking official in the British government is barely explained.

Instead of plausibility or watertight plotting, what you get with London Has Fallen is more Banning being Banning, which involves lots of takedowns of faceless assailants and macho, foul-mouthed posturing that’s more often than not glaringly racist. A line like “Go back to Fuckheadistan or wherever it is your from” is just cheap and ugly. Detach yourself from that, and from its lack of narrative care, and Fallen does deliver a few sequences of tightly-wound action. 

Our Call: STREAM IT as the genre actioner it is, but don’t expect London Has Fallen to overcome its ingrained implausibilities and sour nationalistic grandstanding.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges