On the Second Day of Die Hard, My True Love Gave to Me...

As we know from looking at previous Die HardThe 1980s were famous for the bombastic action films released during the decade. Featuring big burly men fighting other big burly men, often with more guns, bombs, and explosions than appear in Michael Bay's wildest dreams, the action films of the decade were heavy on spectacle, short on realism. And then came a little film called Die Hard that flipped the entire action genre on its head. clones, once a good (or bad) Die Hard movie is established, the best way to then follow up that film is to give the hero a buddy to work with. This changes the formula from a single man working within a confined area (building, stadium, train, etc.) into something more akin to a buddy cop film of the heroes working against the terrorists. For it the be a Die Hard clone it need to have terrorists, of course, since otherwise what we’re making is more of a Lethal WeaponFirst started with a script by Shane Black, the Lethal Weapon franchise (movies and television) tells the story of older cop Murtaugh and his loose cannon, living on the edge partner Riggs. than a Die Hard, and while the two overlap and can be considered of the same larger slice of action cinema, we can’t always argue that they overlap (even if I did make that exact argument three years ago).

So how does one follow up a film about a long warrior fighting his way through the White House to save the U.S. President from some terrorists? You then team him up with the U.S. President to save the man from some terrorists. Whatever else you want to say about London Has Fallen, the direct sequel to the jingoistic and overtly patriotic Olympus Has Fallen, we have to credit the film with understanding the genre it was working on and coming up with the single greatest pairing it could have. The hero and the President fighting side-by-side? A plus. No notes.

And, in many ways, I do think this is a better film than Olympus Has Fallen. Directed by Babak Najafi, this was the Swedish-Persian director’s first Hollywood film (although he had directed multiple films, including action-thrillers) in Sweden before this movie. He was the perfect director, I think, to take this series and craft it into something halfway watchable. He wasn’t an A-lister, so they didn’t have to spend a ton of their $60 Mil budget ($10 Mil down from the first film) to hire him. He’d worked on smaller films so he knew how to get a lot of bang out of not a lot of buck. And he had the skill to direct clear, concise, and interesting action that was fun to watch.

Oh, and being Persian (this is just a guess) he was more willing to give the Middle Eastern terrorists some nuance and character shading, making this a somewhat less jingoistic and racist film than the one that came before. Everything by degrees, at the very minimum.

As the name implies, this film takes place in London. After the British Prime Minister died, suddenly and seemingly due to complications from a recent leg surgery he underwent, all the major leaders of the free world head to London for his funeral. This includes the President of the U.S., Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), despite the protests of the head of his Secret Service detail, Mike Banning (also a returning Gerard Butler). London, under the watch of the Metropolitan Police, is a hard place to protect, and with all those people, and all those targets, Banning doesn’t think there’s any way to truly lock it down. But the President insists as this isn’t the kind of event that a world leader can skip.

Banning, though, is proven right when terrorists, through another carefully orchestrated and choreographed attack, assassinate the leaders of France, Japan, and Italy, and nearly catch the U.S. President as well. What they weren’t expecting was, of course, Mike Banning, number one top Secret Service agent, who is practically a superhero in every way. He manages to pull the President from their clutches and guides him through all their various tricks and traps. At every turn he’s a step ahead, keeping the President away from them and their plans to assassinate the leader publicly for billions to see. It’ll take all Banning has to get the President safely out of London, but then he’s just the man for the job.

From the outset this film has to work against the biggest issue it has: it has too heroic of a hero. When fans discuss the Die Hard films they will note that the series fell off a cliff when hero John McClain stopped being a normal cop and started being a supercop. He was no longer a down on his luck, nearly drunk, degenerate asshole who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time more than once. Instead he was a nearly invincible killing machine who could do anything and survive any encounter, including jumping off the wing of a moving harrier jet. And, unfortunately, that’s the starting place for the Has Fallen films: Mike is already a supercop. There’s nothing that can stand in his way.

The films really can’t battle against this as Mike was established at the beginning of the series as the ultimate hero, leader of his squad, former Army Ranger and otherwise multi-hyphenate. He can mow through a squad of 20 terrorists with just a pistol and a bad one-liner. By the time we see him in this second film the only thing he has to worry about is whether he’ll survive the film to see his new son. Hell, the film has put him on the edge of retirement just so we might suspect maybe he could die (because “I was one day from retirement” is a trope we all understand). He’s a complete person and a superhero when the film starts. There’s nowhere for his character to go.

And, to be clear, this film doesn’t correct all the sins of its predecessor. Despite the movie’s setting of London, and despite the fact that other world leaders are brought into the film, this is still a very America-centric film. The terrorists kill all the other world leaders to make a point, but they want to capture the U.S. President to make an (bold, underlined) point. Despite shooting at the President, seemingly trying to kill him over and over, their real goal was to publicly execute him in a live stream on air because America is bad and they must die, or something. When America wins, everyone else wins by association, this film is saying. And it’s notable that despite this film taking place on British soil, there’s no British leader to assist with the story. No Prime Minister, or acting Prime Minister, or anyone like that. This is America’s story, full stop.

With that said, there are a number of corrective measures in the film that do work. While the bad guys are generic, Middle Eastern people without a specific country (they’re from Pakistan but not acting for Pakistan), they do get some nuance and shading. The film opens with a bombing on their compound, all to kill their leader, Alon Moni Aboutboul's Aamir Barkawi, but the U.S. didn’t have intelligence that civilians would be there, and they end up killing his daughter while missing their actual target. This actually gives the bad guys a reason to fight that matters – revenge is an understandable reason in this context – while also saying, “America isn’t always right,” since they killed a lot of innocent people. Again, context matters.

And, in fact, a lot of the bad guys shown on screen aren’t Middle Eastern (or generically “brown”, if you will). Clearly a bunch of them are mercenaries and other people brought in for the fight, with a lot of white dudes (British guys, from the look of them) battling on the streets against our two man army of Banning and the President. It’s a small step, yes, but just having more people of different looks makes the film feel like it’s not just saying, “all brown people are terrorists,” which, considering the politics of the first film, is a message I’ll take.

Meanwhile, on the construction side, the action is also much improved in this film. While there’s an over-reliance on bad CGI to make up for the smaller budget (which is to be expected), the actual on-the-streets action is solid. Instead of the constant quick cutting of the first film, we get a lot of long takes and even a few solid one-ers. The action feels much smoother and more contiguous, easier to watch and understand. It’s solid and propulsive and while no one is going to compare this to a John WickStarted as a tale of redemption and then revenge (in that order), the John Wick series has grown to be a adynamic, reliable action series that doesn't skimp on the hard hits and gun-toting thrills, elevating Keanu Reeves as one of the greatest action stars ever. movie and try to say this is better it’s pretty decent for a generic, dad rock, Die Hard clone.

I wouldn’t argue that this film is good. It’s not. If it had been released directly to video or streaming I wouldn’t have been surprised at all. It’s passable entertainment that keeps a franchise alive. Except, for some reason, more people turned out for this film than the first one. On its smaller $60 Mil budget it made $205.9 Mil, making it a successful film with no qualified notes required. This was a success, and automatically greenlit a third film for the franchise. I certainly don’t think it’s that good, but apparently a lot of people wanted to watch Gerard Butler kick ass in a dad rock kind of film. And hey, who am I to say they were wrong.

Okay, except they were wrong. This film is trashy fun, but it’s still trash. It’s better made and more entertaining than the first film but only by degrees. People liked it, and that’s fine, but let’s not try to paint this as something more than it is. The Has Fallen franchise really should have ended with one film. The fact that it got two was surprising, but the fact that the sequel was so successful that it warranted a third film… well, that boggles the mind. And so the series continues, us along with it…