Assaut sur Londres

For the whole time I was watching this crazy movie I was wondering what it would be like if the main character was played by, for example, Steven Segal instead of Gerard Butler. And you know what? I might have liked it more. With this cast London Has Fallen isatotal crazy trip which actors like Butler, Freeman or Eckhart don’t deserve. The director is devastating London, nothing makes sense, there is shooting everywhere. And you don’t want that in an action movie with this kind of actors. (2019-09-02)

A film that satisfies the viewer by making the main character give the terrorists not one, but at least four fierce stab wounds. Mentally, London Has Fallen is at the level of Fast & Furious, but without its sense of fun. The CGI, which is important for the film’s target audience, is only average. The movie is barely kept afloat by Gerard Butler’s charisma and a spectacular one-shot shootout just before the climax. (2016-04-12)

Cannon Films presents The President's Man... I mean, Delta Force... no, not that either... London Has Fallen! A film in which Gerard Butler interrogates a hostage by stabbing him with a quarter-yard knife until he learns what he needs. In which the terrorists anticipate the Italian Prime Minister treating himself to a thirty-years-younger model atop Westminster, so they blow up the entire tower of the building just in case. A film where twenty super-equipped SAS soldiers tell a battered Butler running around in his shirt "Lead the way!". A work where most of the budget went on the quantity of special effects, not their quality. Where the protagonist kills 800 people with a gun and a knife and returns to his wife in dutiful labor. A film where Merkel breaks strict security measures to accept a flower from a snotty little girl, whereupon she is shot to pieces. In short, cathartic cinematic idiocy in the vein of the best of the 90s, after which I'll look back fondly on Avengers 35 from my old age. (2016-07-28)

The previous film was at least professionally shot, but its London sequel is missing decent action scenes and special effects that would look better than average video games. I won't mention the characters and actors purely out of decency, and it's terribly evident that London's streets are just backdrops that originated in the studio somewhere. It is, in short, immensely boring. And stupid. (2018-11-21)

It was an improvement over Olympus in terms of quality. Most importantly, I got into the right vibe and managed to tune out most of the melodramatic, patriotic and determined speeches and acts, and enjoyed loads of frantic action during which the Americans totally devastated digital London and turned it into smithereens. I even enjoyed all the "amazing" escapes from tsunamis of fire which made me remember action movies from the eighties and early nineties. It was incredibly silly, but also a kind of guilty pleasure. (2020-01-04)