For a while now I’ve been working with the book American Gods, which goes into some detail about the idea of Avatars and how we tend to house a great deal of emotion and faith into these objects and persons of belief. Imagine my surprise watching the trope-tastic London Has Fallen and realizing that the lead is yet another American God leading us down the path of nationalistic righteousness.
The movie is a sequel, picking up a few years after the original Olympus has Fallen. The first movie dealt with an all out attack on the President of the United States which included a destroyed White House and a disgraced secret service officer making good on his vow to protect the president. The second movie follows the same pattern, except the relationships have shifted back to the way they began in the first movie. The officer and the president are best friends again and he continues to be in charge of the president’s safety. Once again the ‘leader of the free world’ is thrown into harms way–this time in London.
There is a moment early on in the film where it stopped being an original movie and turned right into Tom Clancy’s The Division. I’m talking dark zone level firefights here, folks. That isn’t the God part or even the part that made the movie nearly intolerable. What did it in was the comical level of testorone-laden trash talk and ball swinging. At one point the guy walks out to face 100 baddies and says, “they should’ve brought more guys.” This is old school Bruce Lee transposed unto a brash American macho man (played by a british actor). This is the stuff that raised Lee to the level of fable and in some circles, avatar/god.
The movie isn’t good enough to push our actor up there. Indeed, this is no Sparta. Still I enjoyed it in a boyish bang-bang sort of way that cannot really be matched by a lot of films these days. Was it believeable? No. Did it make a social commetary? Maybe for a split second. Is it worth seeing on the big screen? No. The explosions, etc. aren’t so special that they cannot be enjoyed a home. Or on a tablet. This is Strike Back without the sex and so much longer.