The Sunday Mail
The Big & Small Screen
IF I am to take a wild guess as to what Donald Trump watches during his downtime, top of the list would be his bio-pic titled “You Are Fired”.
Second on that list would be clips from his campaign trails as hordes of Americans scream and shout his name, carrying banners that portray him as the Second Coming.
And third would most likely be Lionsgate’s latest offering, “London Has Fallen”.
It does not take a genius to know that I am not a fan of The Donald, but this is not the platform for my political views. I reserve that for my downtime.
The thing to understand here is that it is really hard not to draw comparisons between Trump’s bid for office and the sequel to 2012’s surprising blockbuster “Olympus Has Fallen”.
The two scream “Racist Propaganda!”
At its very core, “London Has Fallen” is a Die Hard-risque action flick that follows Mike Banning (Gerald Butler) as he is once again called upon to save the life of his president, Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), when terrorists come baying for his head.
It has been a couple years since the events of “Olympus Has Fallen” and our hero Banning finds himself at a crossroads.
On one hand he still feels a sense of duty towards his country and president and wants to continue being a member of the Secret Service, but on the other he wants to spend more time with his pregnant wife Leah (Radha Mitchell).
But he is called into action when the British prime minister dies unexpectedly and president Asher has to attend the funeral along with a handful of other leaders.
The leaders are attacked by terrorists who destroy chunks of London.
The film has what is now standard stock for action movies: banter between the hero and big baddie (Amarwi Bakawi — played by Alon Abutbul), chase and fight sequences, and CGI voodoo.
However, it is the deplorable Trump-like racial undertones that ruin the movie. We are bombarded with the now tawdry though highly aggressive America-is-great ravings, and the suggestion that every Muslim is a terrorist.
And why do these Muslim actors continue taking up roles that demean their religion and culture and portray them as nothing more than terrorists?
Countless Muslims are killed in this movie to save the American president — and it is all because of a case of mistaken identity!
But it is not only the Muslims who are stereotyped and marginalised in “London Has Fallen”. The British themselves are like a sideshow as an American cowboy wages his war against Arabs on London’s streets.
I think a more appropriate title would have been “America Saves London”, or to take a page The Donald’s handbook, “America — The Great”.
Most of the supporting cast who made the first movie, “Olympus Has Fallen”, watchable, are bit-part players: Angela Basset has few lines before her death, Morgan Freeman is a powerless vice-president Allan Trumbull, and Colin Salmon is a useless chief inspector Kevin Hazard.
Take it from me, this film is garbage!
