With London Has Fallen, Hollywood has reached peak stupidity

As “move to Canada” trends online following Donald Trump’s Super Tuesday primary results, perhaps now is the time to take a sober look at American policies that have shaped how the U.S. is viewed around the world. Alternately, you can send a remote killer drone right through that notion of civility and suffer through London Has Fallen, one of the dumbest cinematic examples of jingoistic nonsense in years.

A sequel of sorts to Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen (although the catastrophic terror attacks of that film are never once referenced here), London Has Fallen increases the stakes drastically, while remaining one of the most incompetent action films ever released by a major studio.

While Olympus Has Fallen featured gruff Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) protecting U.S. President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) from a North Korean terrorist attack at the White House, this time the action moves across the pond, where the sudden death of the British Prime Minister leads to heads of state from around the world converging in London for a hastily-arranged funeral.

Naturally, the whole event is a trap led by a Middle Eastern terrorist of nebulous origin—perhaps from “Fuckheadistan,” where Banning urges a terrorist to go back to before knifing him in the brain—in retaliation for a U.S. drone attack two years prior. We know he is serious business, as the Vice President proclaims in an emergency meeting that he is “responsible for more deaths than the plague,” (um, so over 100 million people). With seemingly hundreds of accomplices in all levels of the civil service, the military and law enforcement, the terrorists annihilate London in a series of hilariously cheap looking effects shots, including exploding Westminster Abbey, all in an effort to capture President Asher and execute him on YouTube (these terrorists apparently haven’t discovered Periscope).

The devastation unleashed on London is the equivalent of a dozen 9/11’s, showcased via atrocious looking effects shots that resemble bargain bin PS1 cut scenes. This is a film with a budget north of $100 million, yet looks as cheap as an 80’s episode of Red Dwarf. Swedish director Babak Najafi seems to revel in the cheapness of these effects, adding in a glut of useless slow-motion action scenes, which allow the audience to focus even closer on the garbage fireball effects our ostensible heroes are constantly jumping away from.

About our “heroes”—Banning is unquestionably a maniac, savoring each knife-thrust into a warm-bodied terrorist with a blood thirst that should make the President fairly nervous (he loves it of course). The politics of London Has Fallen are so backwards that in the hands of even a semi-competent director they would have to be read as satire. We learn that the cause of all this wanton destruction was a U.S. attack on a wedding in Pakistan that inadvertently killed a number of innocent people, yet the closing moments of the film feature a speech by the Vice-President extolling the importance of U.S. interventionism (“engaging with the world” is how sleepy-eyed Morgan Freeman puts it), which basically ensures that this cycle of violence will continue unabated.

Reprehensible politics and a complete lack of filmmaking skill aside, London Has Fallen is a lot of fun. It’s rare to witness the birth of an instant camp classic, a film so unremittingly terrible that it will likely live on at midnight screenings for years to come. The emotionless performances are hilarious (every single actor looks like they are slowly emerging from a month-long Ambien coma), and the sheer scope of the damage inflicted by the horde of terrorists is worthy of a few earnest belly laughs (R.I.P. apparently every other worldwide head of state). In fact, London Has Fallen might just be the first great comedy of the year.

London Has Fallen opens this Friday.