Secret Service Superman.

LONDON HAS FALLEN follows in the same vein as its predecessor, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN – a gritty actioner that puts the American president in peril, so his bromantic bodyguard can save him.

The terrorists are winning again.

Movie opens on a Middle Eastern wedding party near Pakistan, which is blown sky-high by an American missile, taking the lives of over 200 people, 2 of whom are sinister-looking guys planning revenge killings. Scorecard: 2 potential criminals, 198 innocent civilians. Told you the terrorists were winning—oh, you took it for granted I meant Middle Eastern olive-skinned people when I said “terrorists,” and not the American military with drones, attacking from a base in Nevada and murdering in cold blood from afar like cowards? The mission officer even tells the guy flying the drone, “You’re clear to execute.” He uses the word “execute.” And gets away with it because – America…

The explosion cross-fades into an American flag – as if to rub our noses in it. (‘Watch us murder with impunity and then wrap ourselves in the stars and stripes to justify it!’) Title card tells us it is Two Years Later…

We meet American President Ben Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and his bodyguard Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) jogging; the youthful, sexy Pres once again amazed at the iron constitution of his chief protector running rings around him. Little does he know his taut-buttocked guardian is writing a Resignation Letter, expecting his first child (with wife Radha Mitchell).

But then – the British Prime Minister dies and every world leader must attend the funeral in London. Not knowing Banning intends to resign, Pres calls on him to make the trip. Banning accepts, telling his understanding wife, ‘One last time.’

With every world leader in London, the city is blown to hell, in a massive coordinated strike that leaves few leaders alive. One of my favorite newsmen, Lawrence O’Donnell, represents Generic American Newsguy: “the attack decimated most of the British landmarks. Five world leaders confirmed dead.” (I’m presuming Londoners would be a tad more impressed with this film than the rest of the world, seeing their landmarks blowing up in such realistic detail, as we Angelenos appreciated the novelty of L.A. landmarks torched by special effects in VOLCANO).

A Pakistani named Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul) takes the blame, the same guy whose daughter was blown up at the wedding earlier. So this is blowback for the American attack. Barkawi was one of the 2 sinister-looking guys – and he didn’t even die, which means the Americans blew up all those innocent people for nothing! (The innocent victims are later referred to as “collateral.” Who are the terrorists again?) And now the Americans seem surprised when arms dealer Barkawi comes after them righteously for blowing up his whole family! These “terrorists” and their vendettas! Why can’t they just let America blow them up without retaliating?!

In the midst of the Pretty Orange Explosions and gun battles, President Asher and his boy Mike Banning, fight their way to the chah-pah! It’s all blam-fest from there on in, superguy Banning providing protection level services that only a man-of-steel could likely get away with.

All the main characters reprise their roles from OLYMPUS: Morgan Freeman is VP, Angela Bassett is Secret Service director; Robert Forster and Melissa Leo in the president’s cabinet, drawing on their reserves of Concerned Face No.7 around the White House conference table; Jackie Earle Haley joining them with Concerned Face No.9.  Colin Salmon is head of British security (the man who should be the black James Bond); and there’s cute and sexy Charlotte Riley as Jacquelin (Banning warns, “Don’t fuck with her!”), dealing with a mole in the British Secret Service, who helped coordinate the London strikes.

Co-written by the writers of OLYMPUS (Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedickt, and directed by Babak Najafi (hey! He sounds like one o’ dem terrorists), LONDON HAS FALLEN is a brutal R-rated bullet-fest with premium swearing and savage, violent deaths. There is a scene where Banning shoves a knife slowly into Barkawi’s son, just so that man’s brother (listening on the walkie-talkie) can hear him scream and die. The president asks Banning, “Was that necessary?” Banning’s curt reply, “No.” It’s comedy gold—but wait! Shouldn’t the Pres be horrified, thinking, “Whoa my God! My bodyguard is a SADIST!”? But no. Funny. Because – American.

The Pres and Banning make it to the chah-pah, called Marine-1. In an amazing sequence (for more than one reason), the convoy of three helicopters runs out of flares to deflect the missiles coming at them from the ground. We hear on the com, “Marine-2, prepare to sacrifice.” Marine-2 says, “Copy”– wait—what?!— Marine-2 simply has to take it in the ass for Marine-1?! And we see Marine-2, without hesitation, fly into the path of the oncoming missile, without any lube.

“Don’t worry, sir. That CNN interview with Kellyanne Conway
has already been logged under “cyberterror.”

Cliché Alert: The Pres and Banning drive through a hail of bullets and get clear, then start laughing, “We fucken made it!” Isn’t this ALWAYS the moment that the attack comes ‘pon the side? The Pres is nabbed by the villains, who plan to execute him live on the internet (which should trend for about 3 hours, and then be replaced by news of the Kardashians).

It’s amusing that Gerard Butler’s character name (Banning) is so close to the actual name of the white supremacist Hutt in the 2017 Dumbo Donald administration (Bannon). This movie makes us wish someone would kidnap Dumbo Donald and beat the shit out of him, as they do President Asher, although one might wonder what principles the villains would make Dumbo Donald renege on (as the pathological liar is devoid of principles or loyalty to any country or creed), or what national secrets they could beat out of him that he hasn’t divulged himself without any prompting? This is why Dumbo Donald – the president who has insulted every other world leader with his ignorance – has not been kidnapped yet. Firstly because everyone knows that no one would try to get him back, and secondly, because there is no ethos there, no system of belief that can be denigrated on the world stage. And really, how far would Dumbo’s Bannon go to rescue his senile, retarded Nazi boss? And we could bet no helicopter would throw itself in the path of an oncoming missile for that obese mongrel swine.

Cliché Alert: Humanizing the Americans – Pres cares for his son, Banning cares for his wife, Morgan Freeman wants to catch a big fish… How come we never hear how much Barkawi cared for his daughter? His emotion for her is relegated to revenge on London. They say he deals weapons to America’s enemies. But didn’t America sell arms to the Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, the Mujahideen, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, and ISIS? Oh, that must have been some other country named The United States of America.

Cliché Alert: Jacquelin discovers the mole betraying British Secret Service. Instead of alerting a whole squad to go pick him up, she confronts him alone in a parking garage. (Just because you’re sexy doesn’t make you smart.) With gun in hand, she then proceeds to tell him how she figured he was the mole. How about saving it for the trial, honey? Then she tells him softly to “Get on the floor.” We know he’s going to back away towards his car, where there is a gun waiting for him. We know she’s going to say it louder, “Get on the floor!” while he continues to back away with his hands up. And we know she’s going to scream “GET ON THE FUCKING FLOOR!” before he lunges for the gun and she is forced to shoot him dead. She could have wounded him, but no. So  when reporting the incident, how will anyone know she is in the right? Maybe she shot this man in cold blood and PLANTED all that evidence making him look like the mole? This scene is so stupid, it made Jacquelin even hotter.

Cliché Alert: Banning deletes his Letter of Resignation. Because he loves his job? Because he loves his country? Because he loves his president? No, because he loves a sequel.

Being reminded of all the damage America has done to the world
always makes the cabinet recoil in horror.

Movie ends by blowing up Barkawi. And to pander to Social Justice Warriors, we clearly hear, “Ground asset confirms: clear of civilian presences.” Yeh, royt. So this makes up for murdering those innocent 195? Because you CHECKED this time for “collateral”? I guess we owe America an apology.

If you love action movies, LONDON HAS FALLEN is a good proponent. It’s well-acted, and may squeeze a poignant tear in small sequences. The set-up scenes in the first act are very compelling for their detail, editing and direction. And production values are exceptional: there is a firefight where our heroes are running towards their objective at the end of a street, while being fired upon from that point, and we can see fiery streaks of heavy duty rounds coming at us from a vanishing point. We see the flares of the firing, hot bullet trails in the air, impact points, meticulous sound design; the blocking and cinematography in this scene alone is stunning. It separates LONDON from its copycats.

It’s a highly predictable film of course, because no American president is killed in an American movie (unless it’s Lincoln or Kennedy). Especially by so-called “terrorists.” Terrorists have to lose in this current fearful political climate. It’s not so much fantasy as wish-fulfillment.

But the funniest thing is, even though movies portray terrorists as being from Anywhere But America, America has proven itself the greatest terrorist threat to the world, especially with a madman at the helm (Dumbo Donald): not even counting the innumerable American gunmen who terrorize schools and malls, America “boasts” the largest nuclear armory in the world, disallows other countries to amass nuclear weapons, uses the threat of WMDs to keep other countries cowed; has military bases around the world holding the boot on other countries’ necks, owes debt to other countries with no intent to pay it back, with the threat of sanctions, embargoes and loss of support, should those countries pipsqueak their dissatisfaction.

And though all other countries still try to outwit America the old-fashioned way – with bombs and guns and man-agents dressed as women – Russia eventually got it right, installing a dimwit sociopath wannabe dictator in the White House in 2016 to do their bidding (much like America installed the Shah of Iran in 1953), and this Dumbo Donald is systematically dismantling the tenets of democracy one freedom fry at a time.

The terrorists have won.

Olympus has fallen.

END

DIE HARD in the White House.

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN but don’t worry – John McClane is there to– I mean, Gerard Butler is there to pick it back up again.

North Korean terrorists take over the White House, and Secret Service Black Ops Special Forces Seal Team Ninja Mission Impossible Flames-Comin-Out-De-Side Agent Gerard Butler is the fly in the ointment, the spanner in the works, the McClane in the Nakatomi.

The problem with a film of this ilk – White House overrun and President taken hostage – is the foregone conclusion. The terrorists can’t win – not against the White House and the President. They just don’t make movies in America like that. Even if a film with that conclusion ever got funding, it would never be released. Not to worry, patriots: the shot of the bullet-riddled American flag unceremoniously dumped off the White House roof in slomo is a cinematic gimmick. Does anyone believe that flag is going to stay off the roof for very long?

So even though the opening scenes are breathtaking – the president’s car going off a bridge, the bomber attack on the White House, the Washington Monument crumbling – the plot is inconsequential, held up by its brutal action, blood-drunk violence, and audacious twists. It’s R-rated for its constant swearing and gruesomeness (heavy artillery fired into humans, shredding their torsos, point-blank head shots, etc.), but it necessarily has to ramp to hyperbole, to distract its audience from that foregone conclusion.

Funniest scene is when rocket-propelled grenades and heavy artillery are being fired directly into the White House front door and secret service guys are simply running out like video game characters directly into the line of fire with their guns drawn and being mowed down. Musta missed that class on Taking Cover; probably trained by Emperor Palpatine for his elite Stormtrooper detail.

DIRECTOR: ”Hey guys, just get shot and fall over, no need to do the Safety Dance.”

OLYMPUS just makes us question why anyone would want to take over the White House in the first place. What do they hope to achieve? Do they want to run America? Shyeh, good luck with health care and immigration reform, terrorists! You deal with those asshole Republicans… As it happens, terrorist leader Kang (Rick Yune, DIE ANOTHER DAY) just wants American troops out of his country. After 60 years of having American installments there for no reason other than belligerent threat, I think that’s kinda fair, don’t you? Uh-uh. Not gonna happen. Reason: America dicks so big and strong, ooouwah!

Remember, Movie Maniacs, in movies such as this, America is always right. There will BE no rationalization of human rights of other countries; there will BE no citation of sovereignty of other nations and trespassing by America; there will BE no justification to use WMDs on America because only America is allowed to use WMDs on other countries. Manchurian brainwashing complete? Right, let’s move on…

OLYMPUS is just another parable for the American people to ignore. No matter that the startling amount of nukes America has aimed at the world is itself a vulnerability if someone were to take over the firing system and blow them up in your own house; it’s the same concept as having guns around your house with a toddler who can access them.

No listen. No cry.

It might be the serious version of WHITE HOUSE DOWN (Jun 2013), but OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is every bit as comedic as that film.

Aaron Eckhart is the Pres – wha–? A white president? I’m sure a lot of young kids are scratching their heads watching this strange fiction. When the Pres and VP cowardly retreat to the safety of their bunker 120 feet below ground, Morgan Freeman (as Speaker of the House) takes over as acting Pres. Okay, we can relate again.

Dylan McDermott is Butler’s smarmy secret service pal. Perfect-featured Radha Mitchell is Butler’s inconsequential wife (for reaction shots outside the fray, and to have someone whose arms he can fall into at the end). Melissa Leo is the tortured Secretary of Defense who refuses to give up some McGuffin code. And Angela Bassett does Glenn Close in AIR FORCE ONE and acts the shit out of talking into an intercom. Ashley Judd dies early, and General Robert Forster argues with the black president.

In an obvious misdirection scene, the terrorists put black hoods on a group of hostages and walk them into a helicopter, the president supposedly amongst them. Helicopter takes off, explodes. Omigod! President dead too?! Nope. Not gonna happen. American movie. CAN’T happen. The censors will not allow it.

Final scenes, consult happy ending flow chart. As orchestra swoons behind him, white president gives Speech No.7 from the Flesh-Crawling Speeches handbook that Morgan Freeman flipped through in DEEP IMPACT.

“Our foe came to desecrate our way of life…” — oh, not like you desecrate all those other ways of life around the globe. You are not in ANY WAY regarding this White House attack as blowback for your troops in other countries; there is NO POSSIBLE WAY America might be ethically wrong for aiming so many nukes at everyone else. The very fact that your code name for your leadership headquarters is “Olympus” bespeaks your insidious arrogance and hubris and utter lack of humility. Owning the biggest arsenal in the world doesn’t mean you are the smartest, strongest, or even most worthy to survive into the future. It just means you have the biggest dicks and the smallest brains.

Manchurian brainwashing complete. Olympus HAS fallen.

END

Crazy like a pox.

Remake of the 1973 George A. Romero movie of the same name, THE CRAZIES is a simple, shallow, well-made thriller. A virus drives the people of a bucolic Midwestern town crazy and they start killing people. I don’t mean to nitpick, but killing is kinda natural for a species that kills to eat, to mate, to survive. You know what would really be crazy? A virus that made you paint your house.

I can’t compare the two versions, not having seen the Romero film, though in reading about it, we can discern how Romero’s ham-fisted, no-budget execution subsumed his sociological commentary. The Romero version shows the military as becoming a bigger problem than the virus problem they were sent to solve; as reviewer Michael Atkinson puts it: “The Ashcroftian governmental cure out-terrorizes the disease.” Yet that version is hobbled by its usual Romero non-acting. Again, I cannot speak with authority, so check it if you have two hours of life to throw away.

Me? One THE CRAZIES is more than enough derangement.

This 2010 version has the same military plane going down, releasing its cargo of deadly bio-weapon virus, but after the fervor that has grown up around America’s deadliest, most useless arm of government, the military who arrive to clean up their mess here do not exacerbate the problem but are merely callous authorities that Our Heroes must escape. Bedecked in ominous gasmasks and hazmat suits to terrorize civilians just right.

Timothy Olyphant is David, the Sheriff of this town where, like CHEERS, everybody knows your name; the man he must shoot in the film’s first minutes (for going, uh, crazy), he addresses by his first name. His doctor wife is Judy (Radha Mitchell), Danielle Panabaker is Judy’s intern, and Joe Anderson is Russell the deputy, a likeable, dependable redneck (how many times can anyone say that?). These four are unaffected by the virus and escape the town and the military who are trying to kill or quarantine them.

Olyphant seems like he’d be a cool guy to hang with. Even in ROCK STAR, he out-smoothed Marky Mark. (Call me, Tim: few beers, shoot some pool, bird-doggin’ chicks. Boys’ night.) One month after this role as a jeans-wearing small town sheriff quick on the draw, his TV series JUSTIFIED would premiere, where he plays a jeans-wearing small town sheriff quick on the draw. Born to do it. That guy’s so cool…

The film’s one touching moment is when Russell realizes he is affected by the virus. Instead of being left to die in the wilderness, or killed immediately, he asks David and Judy, “Can I walk with you guys awhile?” That’s so sad. His performance at that moment captures that human need for others of our kind, the universal truth of fearing to die alone. For a species grown so inured to killing, that vestigial aspect of our nature is our great irony.

THE CRAZIES is the usual romp of jump-scares and gross-out killings and people with makeup that looks like a KFC factory exploded on their faces senselessly trying to kill other people (kinda like zombies; thanks, Romero – what an “original” idea!) and everyone saying “fuck” whenever they want, garnering an R-rating. Now remember kids, excessive gore alone can still warrant a PG-rating. THE CRAZIES is rated R because of its swearing. In other words, the gory mashings of skulls or the pitchfork through the torsos, or the knife through the sheriff’s hand which he succeeds in slamming through the throat of his assailant while it is still through his hand, do not by themselves garner an R-rating; it’s because the filmmakers chose to retain their frequent use of a word which is a euphemism for the act of procreation.

Who’s crazy now?

END

The Swedish Investigation Bureau is too sexy for its investigations.

Rage Against The Machines.

Into this world where we poke, surf, tweet, blog, pillow fight, laugh out loud, tend farms and build empires – all without actually DOING any of it – comes a movie showing us exactly what would happen if our computers really could poke, surf, tweet, blog, pillow fight, laugh out loud, tend farms and build empires for us.

Blueprint for a more perfect Poffy

We’d be sending them out as surrogates for our Selves, in humanoid guise, younger and better-looking than our Selves, controlled remotely by us via neural links. Is this not exactly what we are doing right now “virtually” in our myriad online identities?

SURROGATES may still be termed “science fiction,” but only by the barest of margins – and for how much longer? In this Jonathan Mostow thriller (from the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldes, rewritten for the screen by Michael Ferris and James Brancato, TERMINATOR 3), “surrogates” do everything that humans used to do. Surrogates are the ones who venture out into the “real” world while humans are relegated to the virtual, sitting motionless in recliners, blinders over their eyes, atrophying in darkened rooms in front of their computer screens.

Bruce Willis is Detective Tom Greer. When we first meet him we giggle into our atrophied palms at his stunning Swedish platinum blond hairdo. Soon enough, Tom enters a room where his human operator reclines at a virtual control center – a shaved-headed, rugged yet tired-looking Bruce Willis. I ask you, gentlemen, if you had the thunderfist visage of grizzled, steel-eyed avenger Bruce Willis, would you really want to look like a poreless Swedish boytoy?

With his even blonder and sexier partner Peters (Radha Mitchell), Swedish Tom investigates a slew of murders where people have died at their chairs when their surrogates were destroyed. The surrogate manufacturer VSI (Virtual Self Industries) insists that should not be possible. James Cromwell plays the CEO of VSI, a recluse who sends out little boys as surrogates to take meetings with Bruce’s dollyboy.

VSI’s slogan is “Life… Only Better.” A contingent of humans don’t agree, banding together in Humans Only communities, led by The Prophet (Ving Rhames), and rebelling against the surrogates. Signage at the entrance to their community conjures echoes of THE TERMINATOR: “No Machines Allowed.”

And an underground movement within the humans possesses a kind of ray gun that is doing the surrogate-human killings. That’s the McGuffin that is fussed over, although the excellence of SURROGATES abides in its overarching concept.

The unholy marriage of Terminator and Sex Doll.

Tom’s surrogate is destroyed and he has to venture into the real world in the flesh. The robot-themed movie suddenly becomes a fish-out-of-water tale. Years in the dark have made all humans paranoid agoraphobics, and though Tom “acts” like he is scared of crowds and has panic attacks against being touched or broken, he battles against looking too much like toughguy Bruce Willis. Now sitting in a chair all day should make any normal person potbellied, atrophied and slovenly, but luckily Tom’s real world surrogate is The Bruce Willis – the older he gets, the more like a rock he becomes.

And if there’s anything that Bruce Willis CAN’T do, it’s “fragile.” Hell, that’s why he was so convincing in UNBREAKABLE (unlike breakables like David Bowie in THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, for instance). And no matter how much he whined in SIN CITY about being old and weak-hearted, we all laughed at this patently obvious lie. It’s Bruce Willis!

But it doesn’t suddenly become a fist-fest. In this thought-provoking drama, the action scenes are not gratuitous, but organic to the plot and more powerful for their suddenness and infrequency.

Hard on the heels of LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, Bruce is again warring against technology. In 12 MONKEYS, Bruce was awakened from a chambered slumber, and though he probably should have atrophied in that instance as well, he emerges as tough as… well, as Bruce Willis.

Rosamund Pike plays Tom’s wife, who has not ventured out in years; mortally dependent on her surrogate. The estrangement between Tom and his wife is just one of the disturbing subplots that hits home how powerful a tale SURROGATES is; with more intriguing and complex ramifications and implications than we can cover, on the discomfort and alienation that grows between people who have built up discrete “other selves” as shields against reality.

And I cannot help but see the disturbing parallels with our Real World. We have become our disembodied icons. Watch carefully as you walk down a city street, or in a restaurant or gym – in these public places where humans used to congregate and interact, now the vast majority are connected to electronic devices; people would rather talk to a person on their phone than the person sitting right next to them in a restaurant!

“These people bug me! They really bug me!!”

Online, our surrogates deal with buying, selling, meeting, organizing, chatting, sexing… those impostor selves are out there in the www ether living better lives than we are; Wii and karaoke and amazon and YouTube and thousands of phone apps emulate real world activities to dupe us into relying on our avatars like addictive drugs. The pushback comes in the form of the “green” fad and the manufacturers of sports gear and the live band promoters – marketing that it’s better to GO OUTSIDE. Tragic that ‘going outside’ has degenerated to nothing more than a marketing ploy, which is in turn combated by electronics manufacturers in making everything electronic compact enough to take with you… outside.

The irony is too obvious: we may feel more connected but we are more isolated than ever.

At one point, Tom’s real self tries to cajole his wife’s “surry” into coming out and meeting him in reality, but she just shuts down in front of him. Metaphor and allegory is one thing; being able to literally shut your wife down like that – now that’s something Tom shouldn’t be complaining about!

Tom slash Bruce thunderfists his way to discovering a plot involving the destruction of all surrogates, to force humans into reemerging from their self-imposed home exiles. At first, being the “villain’s” plan, we take it for granted that plot is eeevil — but wait… IS it evil – or the salvation of humankind?…

When all the surrogates drop “dead” in the cities, a radio announcer’s final words, “It appears, at least for now, that we are on our own…” Startling words for a species that is overpopulating the planet. Yet all too true for the aptly-named Twit generation who have entombed themselves in their domiciles erroneously believing they have “friends” because their facebook page tells them so, sitting motionless in recliners, blinders over their eyes, atrophying in darkened rooms in front of computer screens…

END