It’s pretty universally understood that there are two types of action movies — good ones and bad ones. It’s one of those genres that doesn’t seem to have a definitive in between, and even if we can’t always name the criteria for what makes a good action movie, we know a bad one when we see one. One common mistake is for people to think that if it’s a simple “unplug your brain and enjoy” movie, it’s bad. I disagree: there are some truly good action movies that don’t make a lot of sense. London Has Fallen is not one of those them.

London Has Fallen is the creatively-named sequel to Olympus Has Fallen. There, the White House was invaded and destroyed by wily North Korean terrorists. Now, essentially that same simple and uninteresting plot has been rehashed and located to London. In fact, reviewing this movie was actually a bit harder than I expected because the plot is so non-existent that it was almost difficult to get a synopsis together that accurately represented what the movie was about. I’ve had the same problem with other movies (I’m looking at you, Pacific Rim), but this movie beat it in that respect as there were more plot holes than plot in this case.  

So here’s the best I can do. Basically, the Prime Minister dies and the boring President is kidnapped and it’s all up to one boring, stereotypical American action hero to save the day in the most boring, predictable, and generally uninteresting way possible. Oh — Did I mention it was boring?

The main character Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), can be summarized by only two personality traits — discount Jack Bauer and the cookie cutter caring father figure thrown in to give a hard-boiled guy a soft side. The rest of the cast is lackluster, with stereotypes thrown in at every available moment, including a hardcore female character who seems to serve no purpose other than to add a little cheesecake and remind us, “Hey, girls can be tough in action movies too!” I wouldn’t mind her character if it served a significant purpose, but it doesn’t — a flaw that basically everyone in this movie has in spades. Another note on the casting is that while Morgan Freeman is plastered all over the advertising, he plays such a minor role that this part could have been be played by anyone with a larynx and a second grade reading level. It almost feels like false advertising, or maybe just an admittance that a movie this bad was riding on his name to sell tickets.

What about the visuals? Surely a movie with a $60 dollar budget based entirely around an action-oriented premise has good CGI? Alas, London Has Fallen manages to deliver a disappointing performance here as well in the form of shaky cameras and effects that would’ve been acceptable in a movie like this well over a decade ago. It’s one of those times where I wondered if someone wasn’t just playing on their phone behind the scenes and adding explosions into the movie with an app instead of devoting a respectable amount of effort.

Even my longstanding nemesis in the rating department Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a generous 26% rating. The days where Rotten Tomatoes and I agree are generally few and far between, but when they come around it tends to mean something. The movie’s action falls flat, the characters are so flat they’re one dimensional, and the biggest redeeming quality this movie has is that you’ll never have to worry about comparing it to other movies, because by the time you’ve left the theater you’ve probably already forgotten it.. If I had to give it at least a single point, I would give London Has Fallen it 1/10 sequels, because for this series of movies, one sequel was more than enough.