London Has Fallen is an ugly movie. It is xenophobic, racist, and a celebration of American exceptionalism, all while destroying those who get in the way of America’s warped view of its own progress. It is about a hero who is outwardly racist, with a U.S. president that can approve a drone strike in Pakistan before heading out for his early morning jog. Foreign bodies under the rubble of American drones aren’t even considered collateral damage. They’re people that don’t exist to a western world because brown bodies are just targets. This is what London Has Fallen is about, and in many ways it will make you flinch. Not because of the violence, but because it feels so accurate in its intrinsic ugliness, and that is what I can’t stop wrestling with. The unbridled hatred of the picture feels purposeful in ways that made me pause on whether director Babak Najafi is secretly working against the genre, actively finding areas of critique within the jingoism and flag waving.
A U.S. drone strike opens the film, targeting Aamir Barkawi (Alon Abutbul), a single terrorist, and blowing up his daughter’s wedding as necessary collateral. What is the death of innocent Pakistani men and women as long as we nab one terrorist? Through the rubble and smoke of this strike, the screen dissolves to our U.S. President (Aaron Eckhart) joking with action hero Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) as they jog together back in D.C. This drone and these lives simply do not matter in the architecture of this world. It is another day on the job. Of course, this drone strike acts as the inciting incident since Barkawi survives the attack and plots his revenge, which takes place in London at the Prime Minister’s funeral. The terrorists infiltrate the local police and the government itself, taking down London and making it a war zone, killing world leaders and flexing their own power. It is then up to Mike Banning and President Asher to save the day, and they will kill as many brown goons as it takes to do so.
What’s fascinating about the film is the way the opening attack on the wedding by American drones is juxtaposed against this backdrop of London where the villains, painted as terrorists, attack this funeral, both events ending in mass death. One with brown bodies and the other with western bodies. It feels like Najafi is comparing the impersonal violence of a drone attack with the personal violence of this terrorist group taking over a city through force, with goons with machine guns opening fire. The attack in London feels more visceral, whereas the drone attack feels objective and zoomed out. We are watching it from a distance, while London feels like we ourselves are experiencing it. This attack in London will provide justification for the heroes to roam around unchecked, killing as many men as they want in the name of justice, however, the drone attack does not provide us with the same justification for the villains. It is a fascinating thought exercise, speaking to the desensitization of mass violence based on the aesthetics of the event. Depending on the individual audience member, we can see these events unfold and come away with completely different conclusions. London Has Fallen is a Rorschach test, testing our attitudes towards American jingoism. Many of us will see the grotesque politics and be rightfully pushed away, while others will cheer on the white “All American” heroes as they fight and kill to save the day, failing to take stock in their own involvement in this cycle of violence.
While choosing to map this film along these ideological lines, Najafi also plants these little details that push us towards the side of the villains, or at least Najafi hopes so. This is a new wrinkle to a genre that usually revels in jingoism and patriotism. By opening the film with an American drone attack in Pakistan, Najafi is showing us the provocation for this response in London. There is a purposeful humanity creviced in the tragedy that opens the film. A humanity that the heroes lack, which is what slowly shifts our allegiances towards these villains who want to destroy a western world that has been destroying their world.
Mike Banning comes into his own as an action hero in London Has Fallen, whereas in Olympus it felt like he was still trying to find his footing and the filmmaking undercut his presence as a hero. In London, Butler gets to chew scenery, spout one-liners at every opportunity, and have immense fun killing hoards of goons. That turn to full-fledged action hero feels purposeful in Najafi’s interrogation of the genre. Mike Banning is a psychopath, plain and simple, but if you go back and watch your favorite action heroes from the ‘80s and ‘90s, they are just as psychotic. The characters in Predator are not well put together. Stallone in Cobra might as well be Michael Myers. These are horror villains masquerading as action heroes, but because these movies always found a bigger and badder monster to pit against them, we had no choice but to root for them.
Banning and the President have a fun rapport and you could feel their camaraderie. In Olympus, the President was held captive for most of the runtime, whereas in London, he’s on the run with Mike Banning, so he gets to show off his own personality and get in on the action. This oddly enough feels like it was borrowed from White House Down, the other White House siege movie from 2014 that was competing with Olympus. In White House, Jamie Foxx plays the President, directly modeled after Obama, and he gets to have fun with Channing Tatum fighting off the bad guys and saving democracy. The difference of course being that in White House Down, there is no inciting incident that leads to the attacks on the White House, which makes it ok for the audience to cheer on this flag waving patriotism. With London, this same level of violence feels queasy because of the opening drone strike. But also, Jamie Foxx is one of the coolest actors on the planet, so we’re already predisposed to liking him, whereas Aaron Eckhart is more of the traditional white “All American” archetype. Because we don’t have much of a relationship to Eckhart as an actor, we are judging him solely based on the character itself, and the character ordered a drone strike on a wedding.
Najafi is not subtle about how we should feel about Banning and the President. A lot of how this movie frames this conflict goes back to that drone strike, which creates humans out of the terrorists and creates terrorists out of the heroes, blurring lines for the rest of the picture. Even though we are following Banning and President Asher as they face off against Barkawi and his crew, their glib demeanor and flippant attitude reminds us of that transition from drone strike to early morning jog. The opening haunts the rest of the picture and makes us reconsider our battle lines.
With London Has Fallen, Barkawi is not a monster. He’s a grieving father who watched his daughter die. Abutbul plays Barkawi with a quiet gravitas. If you juxtapose Abutbul’s performance with Rick Yune from Olympus Has Fallen, the performances are night and day. Yune plays the villain with this braggadocious swagger and movie star charisma, but Abutbul is more resolved and focused. He feels human, and when you juxtapose that against Butler’s inhumanity as Banning, it feels like Najafi is trying to draw our eyes toward the line between monster and victim. Mike Banning is the hero of this film and of this franchise, but what exactly does that mean in the larger context of a genre that celebrates the heroics of monstrous men?
The character of Sultan Masood, played by Mehdi Dehbi, is another reminder of unchecked western powers destroying regions, displacing its people, and creating cycles of terrorism and violence because of the target they’ve placed on their own backs. Sultan is Barkawi’s tech guy, and in charge of setting up the terrorist group’s live stream. What’s notable about him is that he is missing both of his legs, collateral damage from the opening drone strike. Najafi is putting faces to drone strike victims, and reminding us of America’s own version of terrorism. He continues to draw us back to that opening and remind us of the plight of these brown men. Every time we cut back to Barkawi or Sultan, we are reminded of their shared human struggle. And then, when we go back to Banning and the President, there is no humanity to be found. They are cartoons. Action heroes unchecked. There is a moment where Mike Banning tells a goon to go back to “Fuckheadistan,” before killing him violently. It is a moment that is meant to make us cringe. During action movies, we feel this pressure to root for the heroes just because they have been positioned as the heroes, and if those heroes don’t live up to our standards of morality based on their situation, that can turn us away from them. When Mike Banning is outwardly racist and xenophobic, and we cringe, Najafi has shifted us away from him.
The problem that this film eventually runs into, however, is that Mike Banning and President Asher need to be victorious and in their victory the xenophobia and racism feels more targeted at a specific group this time around, whereas in Olympus the flag waving was generic. At the end of the film, once the President has been captured and the villains are setting up the live stream, we have a moment where something goes slightly wrong. This brings out a desperation in the villains that feels human. There is a moment where they stumble, and you almost feel bad for them because Najafi has been able to explore their humanity in such a relatable way. When Mike Banning storms the hideout, terrorizing the place like he’s Jason Voorhees, we as an audience feel conflicted. We know that these terrorists need to be stopped, but also, stopping them means men like Mike Banning get to be the hero, and that feels intrinsically wrong.
There is a moment at the end where Banning is beating one of the terrorists to a pulp with his bare hands, and as he does it he is ranting about the resiliency of the western (aka white) power structures against men like Barkawi. It is a xenophobic and racist speech that brings into focus the ugly politics of the picture. Music swells and Butler delivers a monologue while killing a man face to face, and it feels like Najafi could not fight against the genre anymore. The film turns from a critique to a celebration.
The action genre is filled with characters like Mike Banning, who are as efficient at killing as The Terminator, but they also have a discernible personality that makes them easy to root for even when we know that they are psychotic. However, with London Has Fallen, while the filmmaking itself is propulsive and exciting, the biggest issue is that at a certain point, Mike Banning’s inhumanity overwhelms and we begin to wonder whether he’s human at all. However, if viewed through the lens of this white action hero fighting off foreign enemies in the name of freedom after this hero’s country droned a wedding into oblivion, Najafi’s intent begins to crystallize. Najafi picks his spots to highlight the enemies as human while highlighting Mike Banning as the opposite, and he is feeding us a spoonful of gross jingoistic violence and asking us to be repulsed. Even though the ending needs to morph into a celebration of this brand of heroic justice, Najafi has laid the foundation for us to question whether we feel ok with this ending. Mike Banning wins, but at the cost of our empathy for him.
