quinta-feira, 3 de março de 2016

London Has Fallen review: ‘sourly nihilistic’

London Has Fallen
Gerard Butler snarls and shoots his way through the capital’s landmarks with his usual charm, but this action sequel should have been a video game instead
A good way to get through Gerard Butler films is to pretend they’re all part of the same series about the world’s unluckiest man. It doesn’t particularly matter if Butler’s character is haplessly outwitted by his ex-wife or shot at by a North Korean strike force: he’s always Butler, beefy and snarling, with that trademark style of facial acting that suggests a mix-up at the contact lens counter.
London Has Fallen actually is a sequel to an Gerard Butler film from 2013, Olympus Has Fallen, in which Butler played a US Secret Service Agent who single-handedly saves the American President (Aaron Eckhart) from a terrorist attack on the White House. Three years on, the terrorists are still at it, and ambush the UK Prime Minister’s funeral in a carefully co-ordinated attempt to wipe out as many world leaders as possible while destroying “most of the known landmarks in the British capital”, as a newsreader puts it. What became of the unknown landmarks, we can only guess at.
The previous Fallen film was a fun, slummy gig for Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), who noted the premise’s genetic links to the lone-wolf action romps of the late Eighties and Nineties, and gave us Die Hard Goes to Washington. His successor, Sweden’s Babak Najafi, transfers Escape From New York across the Atlantic, turning London into the terrorist safari park of Donald Trump’s most fevered imaginings.
This saps the film of suspense at a stroke, because almost everyone that appears on screen turns out to be part of a sleeper cell. Police, soldiers, the Queen’s Guard, members of the public – even an ambulance driver, who in one memorable sequence yanks a grenade launcher from underneath a stretcher, are all out to kill Mike Banning (Butler) and his presidential charge.
Accordingly, much of the film involves Banning machine-gunning extras who look exactly like uniformed public servants, which inevitably – and almost certainly deliberately – gives the action a sourly nihilistic streak.
“Every single one of these guys is a terrorist asshole until proven otherwise,” Banning growls, after murdering a man in police uniform with a single blow to the windpipe. Then later, to some Islamic-looking gunmen, groaning on the floor of an Underground station: “Why don’t you guys pack up your s___ and head back to F___headistan.”
Tube strike: Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart in London Has Fallen
Tube strike: Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart in London Has Fallen
London Has Fallen’s screenplay is credited to four people, though I’d gently suggest that when your hero’s dialogue becomes indistinguishable from a Britain First Facebook thread, it’s time to abandon further script polishes and turn to a box of matches and a flame-charred oil drum.
The rancid unpleasantness is clearly supposed to be part of the fun, and Banning can’t even drink a glass of water without being obnoxious. “I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty as f___,” he roars at the President when the pair reach an MI6 safe house manned by Charlotte Riley, who does her best with a production-line “strong woman” role.
The film fleetingly comes into its own when it shakes off any pretensions of plot or message and allows itself to become the video game it so desperately wants to be. During the final assault on the sleeper cell’s stronghold, Najafi stages a handful of sinuous, shoot-‘em-up tracking shots that show off an imagination and energy that’s entirely lacking elsewhere.
Afterwards, it’s left to Vice President Morgan Freeman, who spends most of the film sombrely squinting at monitors, to tote up the human cost.
“Far too many people died for no good reason,” he dolefully announces at a post-carnage press conference. Well, he said it.

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