Fans of 1980s action will recognize “London Has Fallen’s” set up. A veteran Secret Service agent (Gerard Butler) is about to hang up their holster but gets sucked in for one last, dangerous job. It’s a heady mix of “Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard” where characters say things right out of the tough guy playbook like “Do me a favour… Stay alive,” and ethnic stereotypes never die.
After saving POTUS from a terrorist attack inside the White House in “Olympus Has Fallen,” Butler is back for a second go round as Mike Banning, secret service agent extraordinaire. He’s about to become a father and wants to leave his old life behind. In fact, he’s typing out a letter of resignation when he gets a call from the Oval Office. The British Prime Minister has died suddenly and President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) has to go to England for the state funeral.
With only twenty-four hours to plan the trip Banning is nervous about security but is assured that this will be “the most protected event on earth.” Of course the funeral is not protected enough or the movie would be called “London Has Not Fallen.” A massive terrorist attack kills several world leaders, hundreds of innocent bystanders and decimates most of the landmarks in the British capital. Turns out the man responsible for the attack, an arms dealer named Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul), has a personal grudge against Asher and doesn’t care how many people he has to kill to get his vengeance. Banning is a formidable one-man army—his Spidey senses are always tingling—but will he be able to keep the President safe and prevent the what’s left of London from collapsing into the Thames?
“London Has Fallen” is terror-porn of the highest order, but while half of London is covered in CGI ashes, there is an inherent lack of stakes because you know in your heart that nothing is going to happen to the President. He may be bloodied but by the time the end credits roll it is a guarantee he will be unbowed.
So, with no real tension, what’s left? Plenty of 80s inspired action, that’s what. Like a lost relic from John McClane’s heyday the movie presents a main character who could be a case study in ‘Hero or Psychopath’ 101. He causes carnage with a twinkle in his eye, torturing and killing people in the name of protecting the Prez. It’s all action, all the time, feeling like a throwback to a time when grim faced heroes took on impossible odds—“There’s nearly 100 terrorists in there,” Banning is told before entering a terror hive alone. “They should’ve brought more men,” he grunts.—spouted one liners and the bad guys were anyone with an exotic accent. It’s not particularly enlightened in its world outlook and dismisses the female members of the cast—all of Oscar winner Melissa Leo’s lines could be written on the head of a pin—but if you choose not to think about it much, it’s good, high-octane fun.
Just as dangerous as the bullets and bombs on display is the minefield of tough guy clichés Butler navigates. “I never thought you’d outlive me…” BOOM! “The only person you trust right now is me!” BANG! Like an endlessly looping GIF the banalities never stop. Butler delivers them with gusto, but don’t go to “London Has Fallen” looking for witty or original dialogue. Very little has been done to update the story from its 80s roots. Now the bad guys broadcast on the internet—“It’s on social media!” screams a near hysterical Deputy Chief Mason (Jackie Earle Haley)—but that’s about it for new ideas.
To sum it up: You’ve seen “London Has Fallen” before, but you’ve never seen it quite like this.
No, you’re not dreaming. Freddy Krueger is back. Twenty six years after he first started knocking off the sleep deprived kids of Springwood, Ohio the baddie who gets you when you are most vulnerable—when you’re asleep—is using his iconic claw hand to terrorize a new batch of kids.
Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Freddy had a run in with the local townsfolk and is now taking revenge on Springwood’s children. Unlike the Pied Piper, Freddy was a suspected pedophile who was hunted down and burned alive by a mob of angry parents. Now, years later he’s getting even, passing like a virus through the dreams of his murderer’s high school age children, all of whom have the same puffy, darkly circled eyes of people who drink way too much Red Bull. When Mr. Sandman comes bad things happen. The kids soon become daydream believers as one by one the dreamy Freddy becomes a reality and kills them while the doze.
Like the originals—there were eight “Nightmares” in total—the “Nightmare on Elm Street” reboot alternates between reality, scenes of spurting blood and is-it-a-dream-or-not-sequence? sequences. Drowsy teens wander aimlessly doing all the stupid things kids do in these kinds of movies, like go into creepy old attics late at night and, in a technological update, allow their computers to enter Sleep Mode—Oh no! The scariest thing about the movie, however, is the acting.
The actors aren’t aided by a script that has a teacher nonchalantly say, “Are you OK Miss Fowles?” after a student lets loose with a blood curdling scream in class but even though the script is loaded with clunkers it deserves better than it receives here. The acting is classic b-movie horror technique. Each of the teens seems to have talen lessons in how to exchange horrified meaningful looks with wide (although very puffy) eyes while spewing lines like “Just don’t fall asleep! If you die in your dreams you die for real!”
The acting is uniformly cringe worthy, although Jackie Earle Haley, who is making a career playing these kind of unpleasant characters in movies like “Shutter Island” and “Little Children,” is suitably menacing as Freddy. Unfortunately in reinventing Freddy’s back story the film focuses on his nasty er… pastimes with the kids. A scene with Nancy (Rooney Mara) dressed in a little girl’s dress isn’t scary, it’s just creepy. And not creepy in a good b-movie way, I mean creepy in a perverse NSFW way.
By and large the surreal CGI effects—like Freddy emerging from a wall—aren’t as effective as original director Wes Craven’s decidedly lower tech effects. This is a remake, and not a very good one, that rehashes many of the images from the other “Nightmare” films, leaving the new film with a “been there, done that” feel for anyone familiar with the other movies. Of the new set pieces some are ridiculous—like the clawed hand in the bathtub tentatively attacking Nancy—and some are cool—like the indoor snow storm, but none have the oomph of the original.
Ironically without the thrills and chills of the original “The Nightmare on Elm Street” redux is a sleep inducing exercise in how NOT to revitalize a movie franchise.
Bela Lugosi is the actor most closely associated with Count Dracula, but he is certainly not the only one. More than 200 others have played old toothy over the years including mister tall, dark and gruesome Christopher Lee, who played the blood sucker eleven times.
Ditto Frankenstein’s Monster. Boris Karloff owned the role in 1931, but 60 other actors have tried to fill his size fifteen platform shoes in subsequent years.
The point is, no actor has total possession over a role, no matter how well known they are for playing it.
Just ask Robert Englund.
For 26 years, he has been Freddy Krueger, purveyor of bad dreams, in The Nightmare on Elm Street series. In seven films and the television series, Freddy’s Nightmares, he played the evil offspring of a nun and one hundred maniacs. His take on the character is so loved some people even pay permanent tribute to it.
“I saw an entire magazine of Freddy Krueger tattoos,” he says. “There are thousands of people walking around America with my tattoo on them!”
He’ll always be associated with Freddy, but as of this weekend his run as the most hated man in Springwood, Ohio comes to an end when Jackie Earle Haley makes the iconic role his own in the reboot of the series.
Ironically, Haley auditioned for one of the teen roles in the original film in 1984 but the part went to his friend Johnny Depp.
As for taking on the role, Haley says, “A lot of people wish it was Robert and I get that. He’s made this character iconic and he’s iconic as well. It’s a tough thing, and hopefully when the movie comes out people will dig it.”
Haley is just the latest to fill in for a famous face. Recently, Benicio Del Toro donned the lupine face mask of the Wolf Man, but Lon Chaney Jr. (who had yak hair glued to his face during his 1941 transformation scenes) originated the role 70 years before.
Chaney is best known as The Wolf Man, but he was also one of those actors who stepped in to sub for some of the most famous monsters of filmland. In fact, he is also the only actor to have played all four of the classic movie monsters: The Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein, the Mummy in The Mummy’s Tomb and Count Anthony Alucard, Dracula’s son, in the appropriately named Son of Dracula.
Fans of 1980s action will recognize “London Has Fallen’s” set up. A veteran Secret Service agent (Gerard Butler) is about to hang up their holster but gets sucked in for one last, dangerous job. It’s a heady mix of “Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard” where characters say things right out of the tough guy playbook like “Do me a favour… Stay alive,” and ethnic stereotypes never die.
