Geek Girl Features

In 2013, Gerard Butler had a surprise hit in “Olympus Has Fallen.” So like all success stories in Hollywood, a pointless sequel was devised, but how do you one up the President under attack in the White House? You suspend reality, that’s how.

In “London Has Fallen,” Mike Banning(Gerard Butler) has to leave his pregnant wife and incomplete nursery behind in the states to escort President Asher(Aaron Eckhart)to London after the mysterious death of the British Prime Minister. The U.S. President, along with 40 other heads of state, have come to pay their respects when the entire city falls under attack. This is where the suspension of reality comes in. 

Banning manages to extract the President and the Director of the Secret Service Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett) from the assault on St. Paul’s Cathedral,
but events occur that leave Banning and the President on foot and alone in a suddenly hostile city. It is revealed that the emergency services, from police to medical, have been infiltrated by a terrorist group executing a drawn out revenge plan by Aamir Barkawi(Alon Moni Aboutboul), or number 6 on the F.B.I.’s most wanted list.

Banning and Asher attempt to outsmart the terrorists, but are eventually done in and the terrorists prepare to execute the President live on the Internet. But as I said, we’ve left reality behind, and Banning defies orders from Scotland Yard to wait until backup comes in and starts a one man war against a hundred terrorists camped out in central London. He succeeds, obviously, and the world is down one terrorist mastermind and a few London landmarks.

The movie is rather unremarkable. It’s a fast paced action movie with Gerard Butler taking hits and taking names for well over an hour. Except for when, tragically, London is decimated and a city I left barely three months ago has all of the landmarks I love decimated, I was rather bored for the fairly short(in terms of todays action movie)90 minute run. Had they kept their feet on the ground, it might have been on par with the first film and warranted a trilogy at the end of the day. But I think its time for Asher and Banning to retire from their day jobs respectively, at least before the aliens come for them in “Earth Has Fallen” or whatever crazy scheme the writers can come up with next.

C.