Liverpool Sound and Vision *

Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Morgan Freeman, Charlotte Riley, Alon Aboutboul, Waleed Zuaiter, Michael Wildman, Radha Mitchell, Clarkson Guy Williams, Patrick Kennedy, Colin Salmon.

It’s rare for a film to be seen in the minds of its audience as nothing more than propaganda, of pandering and fulfilling its purpose of being a tool for recruitment in a war that doesn’t make sense and one in which will have those with more sheltered lives running for cover and being subject to a fear that is only as real as Hollywood and Government wish it to be.

For London Has Fallen is a film that seemingly relishes in the opportunity to be seen as Rambo in a suit, to move the propaganda war from the jungles of south east Asia to the streets of a major capital city, one that has survived much worse thrown at it over the course of the centuries but is now seen, at least in the eyes of some as the battleground in which the war is to be fought.

Aside from the propaganda issues and the terrible Islamaphobic message that comes through, the film also worryingly seems to fit the bill for the gaming generation, the one person alone in the dark, festering away and allowing anti-social thoughts to surface creation, that sees this type of film as nothing more than an extension of the computer game industry, that sees the heroism in the character’s on screen without asking why the situation would come about, why stop to ask when there are the bad guys to target and kill.

The film isn’t all bad, however its insensitivity to the nature of what makes London tick, the absurd notion that somehow in two years nobody would have been caught talking about a possible attack at all, especially when we are told constantly that the security of the nation is paramount, is laughable and the insanity of planning such an attack just to get to one person is to show the lack of imagination that comes through the entire script; anybody would think it was election year in the United States of America and that Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo was riding forth to save Ronald Reagan all over again.

A film that insults the intelligence of a cinema audience is a film not brave enough to stand up and offer any other expression other than the fuelling of hate. London Has Fallen is such a film and one that is an emotional turn off.

Ian D. Hall