Rating: 9/20
Plot: North Korean terrorists take over the White House. One man stops them all.
America's laid on pretty thick in this one. I think the movie starts and ends with a flag. This movie is both implausible and predictable, and it suffers because of both of those attributes. CGI shouldn't be this bad in the 21st Century, and watching CGI helicopters crashing, CGI bullet holes forming, and CGI Washington Monuments toppling (the worst of it all), completely took me out of the action and story. Not that the story's any better. It's sort of like 24 amped up on steroids with Gerard Butler transforming from depressed guy to action superstar, complete with action superstar wit, once the killing commences. And what killing! This movie boasts quite the body count, most of the deceased succumbing because of the same CGI bullet holes somewhere on their persons. I mean, when you've got every man in North Korea's one million man standing army somehow getting into Washington D.C., I guess you have to expect that, especially with killing-machine Gerard Butler on the loose.
At one point, Butler says, "It doesn't add up. It doesn't make sense." I thought it might be an outtake where he was complaining about the screenplay, but it was actually a line meant to be spoken by the character. The movie's implausibilities make it a tiresome experience. I fully expected the marble Abraham Lincoln to stand up, march over to the White House, and save the day at some point. It would have made just as much sense.
Now that I've typed that, it's really a movie I want to see.
I learned that the director of this--Antoine Fuqua, who did Training Day--passed on the sequel which just came out because he didn't like the script. He didn't like that script but liked this one? London Has Fallen must be a real doozy then.
Despite the clumsy moments (stuff with Dave, the mole), predictability (What? The president wasn't on the plane?), and cliches (slow-motion screaming and one of those big cinematic "Nooooooo!" moments when the First Lady bites it), this might be worth watching to see an extra in a hospital scene really overdoing things on a stretcher. That's a guy who wanted to be seen.
Sorry for spoiling the movie up there. Chances are, you've already seen and hated this movie as much as I did though.
Something I wondered about: Do you think Morgan Freeman has it written in his contract that he gets to spend most of his movies sitting down these days?
No comments:
Post a Comment