London Has Fallen critical review by Jeremy Jahns

Full-text transcript the movie review:

[00:00:01] These Fallen movies, Olympus has fallen, London has fallen. They try to capture the cheesy action greatness of the 80s and 90s, and they do capture the spirit of those action movies because generally speaking, in those eras, for those genres, sequels are just never as good. London has fallen, so London has Fallen is the sequel to the surprisingly entertaining Olympus Has Fallen. With both of these movies, you got to know what you’re getting into and you’re getting into action. Cheese fest fun. And in this movie, Gerard Butler is the main Secret Service guy who’s protecting Aaron Eckhart, who is his friend, president of the United States. And in London, the super high profile figure has died. So all of these world leaders are there for his funeral and then the shit goes down and terrorists start wiping people out. Cities scale’s style. We’ve made it bigger now. And I’m excited about the positive because I like starting out with the positives. Optimist right here, Gerard Butler, can we just say that he’s just a complete badass dude? In the last act of this movie, I didn’t know if he was channeling his inner solid snake or is John Wick or lovechild of both. I don’t know. I don’t care. The point is, I was looking was like, you’re pretty fucking cool, dude. And Aaron Eckhart, not only our Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler, good actors, but they have great chemistry in this movie.

[00:01:10] I really thought the fact that Gerard Butler isn’t trying to say the president of the United States, he’s trying to save his friend. However, this movie should have known that bigger isn’t always better. This is city scale now. So they’re on the run on a city scale. All right. Olympus has fallen was in a building in that you kind of compare it to die hard. It really was what Die Hard five should have been a one man army in a building taking on the baddies. He’s everyone’s last hope. This is city scale now. So you can really compare it to die hard with a vengeance or live free or die hard. Funny enough, I enjoyed both of those movies. More than London has fallen. Everything was bigger, but it just wasn’t better. And I think that’s because the director, Antoine Fuqua, the director of the original Olympus has Fallen talented director. This is not directed by the same guy. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a different dude. The pacing in this movie was off and just too many scenes, I attribute it to imagine Olympus has fallen. OK, one building. So we’ll say that is one room. Imagine this. One room is filled with about fifty boys, small space, fifty boys, very busy.

[00:02:03] And it’s just a little more it’s going on. And so the pacing is just it moves forward a lot faster, a little more claustrophobic and a little more entertaining. OK, let’s say you have those same fifty beams spread out in an entire shopping mall a little slower by saying Olympus has fallen, didn’t have downtime. I’m just there’s your metaphor, man. It’s what you get. One thing they did not make bigger is the visual effects budget. I think that’s about the same as the original Olympus has fallen. So it was like, let’s keep the visual effects budget for this movie the same as the last movie. OK, you want the same amount of visual effects? No. Let’s have more more facts with less budget, mathematically, that would mean the effects will look worse maybe. Yeah, that’s how that went down. It didn’t look pretty. Some of it was pretty bad. Not just words like lots other cheesy action, fun. You’re not supposed to look at that, but at a point when it’s bad enough, it does pull you out of the movie. And the last part of this movie just wrapped something up. There’s this thing that got to do. It’s like this extra thing. And I feel like they were going to leave it for the sequel. And then the movie didn’t test well with screeners and test audiences.

[00:03:02] And they were like, well, we don’t know if it’s going to go as they go. Let’s just film one scene to wrap it up quickly. And it wrapped up really quickly. And that was that. I really feel like that’s what happened as London has fallen, tries to springboard off of the vibe and premise of what Olympus has Fallen set up, which is 90s action movies in the 2010. And although Gerard Butler is awesome in this movie, he’s a complete badass. He’s fun to watch the movie that he is in. The movie that surrounds him just isn’t as entertaining. If you like cheesy 90s action movies, great. Watchit, have fun, know what you’re getting into and know that this is not as good as the original. I will say London has fallen is probably a better time if you’re drunk. Yeah, no, it’s a party driver. But there’s such that as I think everyone knows, I’m a bad ass. By now or so London has fallen. Have you seen it? What did you think about it was the prime example of a sequel that’s just not as good as the original, whatever it is. But I really think comment below. Let me know. And as always, if you like what you’ve seen here and you want to see more, click right here to see more.