London Has Fallen (15)

two stars

Dir: Babak Najafi

With: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman

Runtime: 99 minutes

THE Oscars set has barely been dismantled, the cleaners are still sweeping up the popped balloons and deflated losers, and the jewellery companies are writing the first of their please, please, please letters to prise on-loan sparklers back from actresses. High old time, then, to start speculating about next year’s race.

Opening a mental envelope, I can confidently predict that London Has Fallen, the new movie starring and produced by Scotland’s Gerard Butler, will probably not be troubling the Academy voters next year. Sorry, Gerry. Not your year, son.

That said, if you are in the mood for a film so over the top it makes Donald Trump look like the Dalai Lama, and so supremely daft it should be wearing a fright wig and red nose, then roll up, roll up to London Has Fallen this weekend.

The keen-eyed will wonder if Babak Najafi’s picture bears any relation to Olympus has Fallen, the 2013 actioner in which the US president (played by Aaron Eckhart) is taken hostage and saved more or less single-handedly by his supremely capable secret service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler). It would be spoiling the plot to say, but have a guess. Which does leave one wondering just how unlucky one president can be. To be taken hostage once by crazed terrorists from an indeterminate foreign country is a misfortune, twice starts to look like the man is a bally jinx.

When we catch up with President Benjamin Asher and his trusty secret service agent again it is clear that their bromance is still going great guns. Asher remains the blue eyed boy, and Banning the tough guy who watches his back. But someone on the writing team must have found an old newspaper on a park bench because this time round the bad guys are from the Arab world, and there are a few mentions of drone strikes and beheadings. Bad taste? As Sarah Palin would say, you betcha. And we have only just begun.

Olympus has Fallen was directed by Antoine “Training Day” Fuqua, who kept the murder and mayhem within roughly believable limits. It was all baloney, but if you squinted a bit, divided by ten, added three and took away the first number you though of, the story might, just might, hold together.

Najafi has dispensed with all such restraints. Here, the bullets and bon mots fly with reckless abandon, and one is left admiring the ability of everyone around Butler to keep a straight face while the wall to wall nonsense unfolds. Morgan Freeman, back playing the Speaker who takes control in the situation room in DC, does an especially fine job of not ending his sentences by bursting into hysterical laughter and screaming, “Get my agent on the phone!” Now there’s Oscar-winning class for you.

Najafi does make impressive use of London’s narrowed streets to create an urban war zone, but otherwise he is not interested much in verite. Stereotypes are as common as street signs, from the plucky MI6 Brits to the Italian premier who has an eye for the ladies. This is international affairs as imagined by the writers of Roy of the Rovers.

Through it all, Butler ducks and dives, runs and rolls, and blows things to smithereens. Apart from the safety of the president and the thought of the little woman waiting at home, nothing seems to bother Branning much, especially not logic, gravity or odds as long as the Nile. He is a one man SAS: who dares wins, then quips about it.

With the last picture taking £115 million worldwide, and given the strength of Butler’s fan following, London Has Fallen should rise up the moviegoing charts quickly enough. One wonders, though, where the franchise can go next. How about Glasgow Has Fallen, a tale set in the icy mean streets of Scotland’s first city during one week in January? Or Holyrood Has Fallen, in which a badly laid carpet tile at the entrance to Holyrood’s canteen wreaks havoc among Scotland’s legislators? Come home Gerry, your home country needs you too.