More loving depictions of Arabs in latest Hollywood blockbuster
He had just saved the world from terrorists and gleefully told one to head "back to F***head-istan".
Behind him, a small TV relays the core message of the action extravaganza via a "speech to nation" by the US vice-president played by Morgan Freeman.
In his distinctly soothing voice, Freeman make a passionate arguement against those who say that domestic terroism is linked to US military intervention in the Middle East.
Instead Freeman gently coos that despite the lack of "good options", US overseas action is the only way to ensure that attacks don't take place on American soil. Doing nothing he says would be the greater crime.
Friday's release of London has Fallen sees Hollywood's big-budget film producers once again bluntly echo US-interventionism rhetoric.
The film shows London's landmarks crumble beneath the weight of explosions and gunfire.
US drone strikes are portayed as vital defence mechanisms against the supremely powerful terror of a unspecified "Arab" and "Muslim" people.
With film critics queuing up to pan the movie's shoddy CGI, ridiculous cliches, stodgy acting and racism, what remains striking is the sheer generic identity of the "terrorist Easterner".
US vice president [played by Morgan Freeman] says that American action abroad makes the world safer [Lionsgate Films] |
In a futile gesture of neutrality, acts of terror in the film are orchestrated not by a jihadis but rather a criminal-mastermind and arms-dealer named Aamir Barkawi (played by Israeli actor Alon Moni Aboutboul).
The terms Islam, "jihad" or Muslim are never mentioned.
But London has Fallen resolutely presents a narrative where all Middle Easterners, and people of Muslim nations elsewhere, are identified as members of an undifferentiated and indistinguishable "common mass".
The mixing and matching of Pakistani, Arab, and Iranian cultural identifiers - who come together to wreak havoc in London - represents 2016's latest representation of the 19th century "Eastern horde".
In a movie likely to have Donald Trump thumping his chest, crass "orientalism" once again rears its head.
A spoiler-warning can be flagged here, but unnecessary as one needs to be briefly familiar with the "US hero defeats Arab terrorists" storyline could probably guess the whole plot.
World leaders are outlined in a cartoonish fashion, including a French president who wants to arrive on a boat and fashionably late. |
The film begins in a sprawling compound in a dusty region of Pakistan, and the FBI's most-wanted arms dealer, Barkawi, is introduced. He finds time to plot nefarious crimes with his sons despite it being the occasion of his daughter's wedding.
The first of many explosions in the film comes in the form of a massive US drone-strike, which ignites the whole compound and ends the sari-wearing daughter's special day.
Soon we learn somehow that Barkawi and his sons survived and are leading their hundreds of followers to revenge.
London becomes the setting for the rest of the movie, where world leaders have gathered to mourn the death of the UK prime minister, including the US president (Aaron Eckheart) and his reluctant bodyguard Mike Banning (Gerard Bulter).
Cue 20 minutes of action sequences and rampant explosions as the world's largest terrorist attack unfolds.
World leaders are outlined in a cartoonish fashion, including a French president who wants to arrive on a boat and fashionably late, and an Italian prime minister only ever shown sleazing on Westminster Abbey's rooftop.
They are dispatched one-by-one in a series of outlandish explosions, culiminating in the blowing up of Big Ben.
Included in the mass terror plot is London's finest, with dozens of Met police officers guarding the event turning out to be undercover terrorists.
Israeli actor Alon Moni Aboutbou plays the criminal-mastermind Aamir Barkawi in London Has Fallen [Twitter] |
Cue another 50 minutes of many more terrorists [despite the many already killed by an angry Gerald Butler] pursuing the US-president and his grunting bodyguard. Unsuprisingly, the terrorists lose the fight.
Directed by Swedish-Iranian Babak Najafi, and executively produced by ex-Israeli soldier and long-term US film producer Avi Lerner, London has Fallen recycles old themes of the US heroism in the face of Muslim terror.
There is also an almighty effort to mingle all Eastern identities and present them as an undistinguished whole that threaten the West.
Despite the Bhangra, bangles-and-sari's infused Pakistani wedding of Barkawi's daughter, we only ever see Barkawi again directing operations from a well-protected quarter in a city that appears to be Sanaa, Yemen.
His three sons [including one now in a wheel-chair] are all in London to direct the attack.
Between them they express a full-gamut of Eastern identities, with Kamran [a common Pakistani name], Reza [pronounced in its Farsi-version] and Sultan [a quintessentially Gulf-Arab name] deftly wielding guns, knives and laptops as the attack unfolds.
London’s landmarks crumble beneath the weight of rampant explosions and gunfire set off by terrorists in London Has Fallen [Lionsgate Films] |
Crucially, they are able to drawn on hundreds of brown-skinned or Eastern-looking folk to infiltrate London's police and launch their assault.
The message is encapsulated most bluntly when Butler comes again face-to-face with his enemy. He tells him that "you people" keep on trying to kill us, but you do not realise that "we" will still be here in 1,000 years.
Only "heroism" and a will to take action will save the day.
Terror leader Barkawi's final moment take places in a phone-call with the US vice-President when he is told to look out the window. A final drone-strike ends the call.
"[The film] was intenseness because the subject matter was intense," leading-actor Gerald Butler said.
Given the state of the world today and the threat of terrorism that exists for real, we are constantly aware that something similar to what we were filming could happen, though we all pray it never does. - Gerald Butler |
"Given the state of the world today and the threat of terrorism that exists for real, we are constantly aware that something similar to what we were filming could happen, through we all pray it never does," he added.
The story of the film is clear.
A faceless, de-characterised and de-humanised "eastern horde" is out there and living "in our cities," and only through the intervention in their homelands can we be ever-kept safe.