Don’t nominate it for Oscars, but you might enjoy it if you like movies about one guy taking on a whole bunch of terrorists.

You may remember Olympus Has Fallen, the movie that came out at the same time as White House Down. The latter explored a similar plot – Channing Tatum was the secret service agent (kind of), and Jamie Foxx was the President – back in 2013. While I enjoyed both, I preferred Olympus Has Fallen. Olympus was successful enough to spark a sequel – London Has Fallen, which sees the return of Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Morgan Freeman and Gerard Butler. Butler also has a producer credit for this movie.

In London Has Fallen, U.S. Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (played by Butler) is once again tasked with protecting the President, Benjamin Asher (played by Eckhart) who is visiting London for a funeral. Well, that’s until a major terrorist starts targeting all the important people – presidents, chancellors, prime ministers – and so on. Asher and Banning  must avoid the terrorists, who have downed London with complex bombings and assassinations.

This movie is more graphic than the first. However, the pacing gets slowed down by fights that, really could have wrapped up five minutes ago. The great thing about Olympus is that the fighting seemed to have purpose, built up to an intriguing finish, and left those who like their violence satisfied. You don’t really get that here – it’s a little slower. Let me put it to you this way: I like to call it a ‘physical rambling,’ namely because it’s a bunch of fighting that just becomes fighting, then, after way too much time, finally gets to its point. As for actual dialogue…well, what do you expect? Butler is no Thespian; he’s really here to kick asses and take names – and does an okay job.

I know technology is limited for some companies, but with movies like The Martian in our midst, we do have the technology to make CGI look fairly realistic – I’m talking to you, London Has Fallen. Of course, the difference in budget between The Martian and London Has Fallen is about $40 million (obviously the former had the bigger budget), but I’m pretty sure we can try a little harder when we’re depicting explosions. No pixels, please.

London Has Fallen will more likely than not have a tougher weekend. With Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Zootopia slated for release, and Deadpool still going strong in the theatres, I don’t see it being number one – but I do see it breaking the top five. I hope it takes Gods of Egypt down (another Butler movie), because that movie is awful. You can relive me shitting on that movie here. 

London Has Fallen gets three London Bridges (not falling down) out of five from me.

You can take a look at the trailer for London Has Fallen below!