Movie Review: London Has Fallen


London Has Fallen is the sequel to 2013's Olympus Has Fallen, only with a change of venue: this time, Gerard Butler and U.S. president Aaron Eckhart are in London for a state funeral, rather than trapped in the White House. However, while the first movie was a fun, action-packed film, this version, although still action-packed, ended up being a bit stale.

When the Prime Minister of England suddenly passes away, the President of the United States (Eckhart) must rearrange his schedule to be able to attend the funeral. He brings with him Mike Banning (Butler), his ever-faithful Secret Service agent from the last film, and every security precaution is taken. What they don't know, however, is that they're walking into a trap, and soon they will be running for their lives through the city in order to escape terrorists who want world leaders dead.

Much of the cast from the previous movie is back for this installment, and it's a good group of actors: Morgan Freeman as the Vice President, Angela Bassett as Lynne Jacobs, and Melissa Leo (always a chameleon!) as Defense Secretary Ruth McMillan. It's not the cast's fault that this movie failed to be as good as its predecessor, however - it's the fault of the script. Also, for some reason, I thought this movie was rated PG-13, but it's definitely rated R; this movie really takes advantage of its R rating, too, and almost every one of Butler's lines, and some of Eckhart's, too, had profanity in it, once they started to fight for their lives on the streets of London.

Maybe see this movie. I liked the first film a lot more than this one - I gave that one 3.5/5 stars out of 5 - and I found this version to be a poor man's copy of the last one. It was nice to see London on the big screen - I traveled there in 2009 - but most of what you see is actually alleyways and safehouses, as the President and Mike Banning scramble to try and find safety. The end of this movie definitely leaves it open for another sequel, but at the time of this writing, the film has a dismal 17% on Rotten Tomatoes - so I suppose that will depend on how much money it actually makes at the box office.

London Has Fallen is in theaters today, March 4th, and is rated R with a runtime of 99 minutes. 2.5 stars out of 5.

{and if you want to check out Olympus Has Fallen: you can snag the DVD + Ultraviolet copy for only $3.99 currently on Amazon}

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