LONDON HAS FALLEN

LONDON HAS FALLEN is a pretty dispiriting piece of hack action with a second-rate cast, second-rate actors, second-rate direction and second-rate action sequences.  Gerard Butler reprises his role as a special services agent assigned to protect his friend, the President (Aaron Eckhart.)  They go to London on short notice to attend the funeral of the Prime Minister, but it turns out all the world leaders have been lured there so that terrorists can take them out and much of iconic London with them.  The result is a bunch of low-rent sub-24 action and anti-terrorist plotting in tube stations and abandoned houses with nasty people threatening to behead the President on the internet.  Of course, Butler's action hero is going to save the day so there's no real sense of peril.  And then he'll go home to his cute wife and baby.  

This movie's precursor, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, was a pretty bad movie - far worse than WHITE HOUSE DOWN, which had essentially the same plot.  OHF didn't have the humour of the latter, or indeed the charismatic lead actors.  If anything, LHF is even worse, as director Antoine Fuqua left the project to be replaced by a no-name German director.  The whole thing feels like a bad TV movie or straight-to-DVD action film.  One can only hope it does so badly at the box office that a third instalment is prevented. 

LONDON HAS FALLEN has a running time of 99 minutes and is rated R. The movie is on global release.

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN

Antoine Fuqua's OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is glorious trash and the true heir to the DIE HARD franchise. Instead of a tired reworking of the Bruce Willis underdog saves the day action blockbuster we get its transmutation into a hackneyed but convincingly tense thriller. The secret of its success? Like all pastiche, you have to play it with a completely straight face. And by casting actors of the calibre of Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo and Angela Bassett that's what this movie does. In addition, with its high gloss tech package, the movie looks as convincing as it feels. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the sequence in which the White House is taken by enemy agents is as convincing, gripping and terrifying as the plane malfunction sequence that opens FLIGHT.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is, however, how well Gerard "This Is Spaaaaarta!" Butler does as the action hero.  He's an actor whose personal life seems as feckless as his career choices - and this loserdom nicely carries over into perceptions of his character, Banning, a disgraced and guilt-ridden former Secret Service agent who manages to get inside the White House during the raid and leads a single-handed fight back against the North Koreans.

So what's it all about Alfie?  In the prologue, we see Secret Service agent Banning (Butler) involved in the tragic death of the First Lady (Ashley Judd), leaving her picture perfect husband, President Asher a widower and their cute little son Connor motherless.  As we move into the main body of the film, we see the White House come under aerial and ground assault from North Korean terrorists, and the President and his key staff (Leo, Freeman, Bassett etc) quickly moved into the underground bunker. Crucially, the President being a clean-cut, all-American, wonderful guy, he chooses to take the South Korean premier with him, allowing the treacherous Kang (Rick Yune - THE MAN WITH THE IRON FIST) to penetrate the bunker too.  The only good news is that Banning, since demoted, has made his way inside the White House and makes contact with his former boss (Bassett) allowing all kinds of heroic derring do and kiddie rescuing. 

You can predict how the plot's going to unfold from the trailer. There's nothing new here but the familiar story is so well-done, so enjoyable to watch, so comforting in its predictability that you can't help but have a good time.  Gerard Butler may well have resuscitated his ailing career, and director Antoine Fuqua certainly makes his most accomplished film since TRAINING DAY, even if it's far less radical in its content. 

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is on release in the USA, France, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Kuwait, Macedonia, Serbia, Canada, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Iceland and Estonia. It opens on April 4th in Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Russia, Slovenia, Lithuania and Romania. It opens on April 12th in Singapore and Mexico; on April 18th in the UK, Belgium, Italy, New Zealand and Finland; on May 3rd in Sweden; on May 10th in the Netherlands and Norway; on May 16th in Argentina and on June 8th in Japan. 

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN has a running time of 120 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

SURROGATES - weakly plotted sci-fi thriller

There have been a couple of movies recently that tackle the issue of avatars and virtual relationships. In GAMER, an updated version of RUNNING MAN, the ability to pilot real-life chip-implanted humans brings out the worst in humanity. As with today’s plain vanilla internet, advanced IT is used most commonly to allow humans to indulge vices as old as time. You can disapprove of the nasty, misogynistic, bleak depiction of humanity at the core of GAMER, but sad to say, the numbers support it. By contrast, the new Bruce Willis sci-fi thriller SURROGATES, posits a world in which the ability to pilot robot avatars has resulted in a safer, if anodyne, world. Humans have retreated to their pyjamas and their lounges, steering robots through life instead. Of course, the robots are our younger, idealized selves, but the exploitation at the heart of GAMER is absent. Indeed, in a world full of robots, crime rates have dropped dramatically. There is, however, a resistance movement that wants humans to get back into actual contact with each other. The plot of the movie sees two cops (Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell) hunting for a new weapon that has been used to kill real people by killing their surrogates. The existence of such a weapon threatens the very point of having surrogates in the first place – cocooning people from harm. There are some shenanigans involving the resistance movement and the original creator of the surrogates (James Cromwell) - and stakes so high, and motivation so iillogical, as to be ludicrous. It's all as uninteresting as the premise of a crime-free robot-induced future is unbelievable. The only impressive thing about the film is the make-up. They really did a great job of creating the life-like but ever-so-slightly plastic look of the surrogates.

SURROGATES is on release in Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, Poland, Turkey, the UK and the US. It opens next week in Egypt, Hungary, singapore, South Korea, Bulgaria, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Itopens on October 9th in the Czech Republic, Brazil, Denmark and Estonia. It opens on October 15th in the Netherlands and Spain. It opens on October 22nd in New Zealand, Slovenia and the Ukraine. It opens on October 28th in Belgium, france, Argentina and Portugal. It opens on November 5th in Greece and Italy. It opens on January 5th in Italy; January 21st in Germany and January 22nd in Japan.

Justifiably overlooked DVD of the month - THICK AS THIEVES aka THE CODE

Predictable, derivative straight-to-DVD heist flick, directed by Mimi Leder (PAY IT FORWARD DEEP IMPACT) and starring a pay-check motivated Morgan Freeman and a mis-cast Antonio Banderas. Freeman plays an elderly thief "Ripley" (winks to Highsmith), who recruits the younger, inexperienced, Banderas (youth signalled by wearing a hoodie.) Meanwhile, Banderas' character is having an affair with a Russian chick (Radha Mitchell). No double-cross or double-identity is left unturned, and the ending is ludicrously schmaltzy. Ted Humphrey's script is poorly conceptualised and the dialogue is hammy. Bulgaria makes a poor stand-in for New York. Mimi Leder's shooting style is over-stylised. And the cast is uniformly too old and ill-motivated. Avoid.

THICK AS THIEVES went straight to DVD in the UK and the US earlier this year.

FEAST OF LOVE - surprisingly moving

I can see why some critics have labelled FEAST OF LOVE contrived and saccharine, but all the same I warmed to the lead characters and was genuinely moved by it. I think it's because the lead actors have such warmth and charm and play it so straight that this trumps the somewhat obvious script.

The movie is a slice of life from a small university town in America. Morgan Freeman plays a happily married man called Harry Stevenson who's grieving for his son. He's friends with an open-hearted coffee house owner called Bradley played by Greg Kinnear. Bradley will be deserted by a sapphic first wife (Selma Blair) and a calculating adulterous second (Radha Mitchell). It's not that he's blameless, but he does end up battered by love. Bradley also employs a young kid called Oscar (Toby Hemingway) who finds love at first sight with a girl called Chloe (Alexa Davelos). Greg Kinnear and Alex Davelos in particular are great in their roles. We really believe in them and want them to be happy. And I totally bought Harry's quasi-paternal relationship with Chloe.

Now I realise that these sort of inter-linking can narratives can be a bit too cute and neat. And I think that if you're going to see FEAST OF LOVE you have to make a decision to go with that. But there is some grit and grime. I love that the writers don't shy away from the sexual component to love, and it's nice to see a movie celeberate loving sex as opposed to just lust. It's also nice to see a mature relationship. I also like the fact that we do see the highs and lows of love. Altogether, this is a strangely realistic and yet sweet movie!

FEAST OF LOVE is on release in the US and opens in the UK on October 5th. It opens in Portugal on October 18th, in Israel on October 25th, in Spain on October 31st, in Germany on January 24th and in Norway in February 2008.