The great majority
of movie reviewers lean far left politically, so when they sneeringly dismiss a
new Hollywood action thriller as “terror exploitation,” “racist, “jingoistic,”
“terror porn,” “outrageously propagandistic,” “anti-Muslim xenophobia” and “the
perfect movie for Donald Trump’s America,” then you can take that as a strong
recommendation for getting to the cinema.
The Gerard Butler
action vehicle London Has Fallen opened recently and reviewers are
panning it as brutal, cheesy, implausible, and clichéd. Apparently those
reviewers are unfamiliar with the genre or feel it is beneath them, because it
is generally the nature of action thrillers to be brutal, cheesy,
implausible, and clichéd. Moviegoers aren’t drawn to action thrillers for their
slice-of-life realism or cinematic aesthetics; they want a two-hour dose of
escapist adrenalin, an action-packed, over-the-top fun ride, and on that score London
Has Fallen satisfies. The audience I saw it with on opening day applauded
at the end.
In this followup
to last year’s terrorism thriller Olympus Has Fallen, Butler plays
Secret Service agent Mike Banning, who almost single-handedly disrupts a plot,
conceived by a Pakistani terror mastermind, to execute the American President
on live television. In the process Banning lays waste in various ways to practically
an entire battalion of terrorists. The movie is an uncomplicated guilty
pleasure with the added bonus of providing the audience with a jihadist-killing
catharsis – in other words, just the sort of flick to inspire patriots and
raise the hackles of Progressive reviewers everywhere.
The clickbait site
Uproxx, for example, declared the movie
“unbelievably racist,” although the reviewer’s sole evidence for that is a
scene in which agent Banning tells a terrorist to go “back to F**k-headistan or
wherever it is you’re from.” That’s not racism; it’s not even so-called
Islamophobia. It’s just Banning’s contempt for America-hating terrorists and
the shariah cesspools that produce them. But leave it to the multicultural left
to cry racism and leap to the defense of evil jihadists.
“London Has
Fallen draws a line,” the reviewer complains, “and that line is
between ‘us’ and ‘them.’” So it should, because there is a line between
us – the good guys – and Islamic terrorists – the bad guys – but the left can’t
bring itself to make that distinction. Instead, leftists are repulsed by any
movie that depicts a clear moral line, unless it’s America, Christianity, and/or
capitalism on the other side of it.
The Uproxx
reviewer went on to sneer about this being “the perfect movie for Trump’s
America” because it unashamedly revels in American power and in the deaths of
terrorists, the leader of whom happens to be Muslim (never mind that the left
would revel in the deaths of Donald Trump and his supporters). That comment
says everything about the left’s allegiance to multiculturalism, their
ingrained anti-Americanism, and their smug moral superiority over the red state
Americans they perceive to be provincial bigots.
The reviewer at
the Hollywood industry rag Variety pulled out all the left’s predictable
arsenal of dismissive insults, calling the movie “effortlessly
racist” and complaining of its “familiar Islamophobia” and “reactionary
fear-mongering.” Islam, as all reasonable Americans know full well, is not a
race, so there’s no racism, particularly since the majority of Special Agent
Banning’s victims appear to be white. And how is it Islamophobia or fear-mongering
if Muslim terrorists are actually trying to kill you in the real world? Just
like the left calls 1950s anti-Communist investigations “witch hunts,” it now
insists on denying that Islamic terrorism is a real-world threat.
A reviewer at Flick
Filosopher completely lost his mind over London Has Fallen. He summarized
it as “a Nuremberg rally for 21st-century America. Pure terror porn: racist,
jingoistic, thoroughly obnoxious. Donald Trump voters will love it” (again with
the jab at Trump supporters). The reviewer actually refers to “swarthy brown
terrorists” in the movie, even though, again, most of the terrorists Banning
dispatches to Hades seem to be white. The reviewer also sniffs at the “fear-mongered
audience” who will be “hungry for blood” after this flick – suggesting that “Donald
Trump voters” will leave the theater eager to carry out that violent
anti-Muslim backlash which the left has been predicting since 9/11/2001.
The New York Post’s Lou Lumenick called the movie
“racist” and “anti-Muslim xenophobia” – without adducing a single instance of
racism or xenophobia in the film. I don’t know Lumenick’s politics, but for the
left, any Hollywood movie in which a Muslim is depicted as the bad guy
must automatically be deemed racist and anti-Muslim, even if the movie also features
a good Muslim character, because any criticism of Islam is not allowed.
Remember, the future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.
“It’s about us
winning,” Gerard Butler said of the film. “It’s
about what happens when the shit hits the fan, and who stands up to face the
challenge. It’s based on heroism and the good guys kicking ass.” Yes, and
American heroes kicking ass is anathema to the left. American Sniper, 13
Hours, Lone Survivor, Zero Dark Thirty, Act of Valor, Red
Dawn, London Has Fallen – all recent movies about American heroes
versus foreign enemies, and all derided by reviewers as racist, jingoistic, and
xenophobic.
Leftist reviewers
don’t respect the action thriller genre itself for a number of reasons. First,
they don’t like guns, which they believe only the government should possess.
Second, as I mentioned, their world view rejects moral distinctions between
good guys and bad guys unless the latter are social justice targets like greedy
white businessmen. Hollywood doles out Oscars to movies with social justice
themes; action thrillers in which American heroes deliver bloody justice to
evil foreigners don’t make that cut. And third, action thrillers always end on
an upbeat note, and reviewers who have been trained to worship the cinematic nihilism
of pretentious European auteurs consider happy endings to be a simpleminded,
contemptibly American characteristic.
When I saw London
Has Fallen, among the twenty minutes of trailers prior to the feature was
one promoting an upcoming George Clooney drama called Money Monster. In
it, the liberal-activist-moonlighting-as-an-actor stars as the host of an
investment advice show. He’s taken hostage on-the-air by an angry, working
class young investor whose life savings have been wiped out by white Wall
Street fraudsters – the only bad guys Hollywood enthusiastically demonizes.
Clooney and the movie will be praised by reviewers for bravely addressing
social justice issues like inequality.
But if you want to
see an American hero kicking ass, skip Clooney, ignore the reviewers, and see London
Has Fallen.
From FrontPage Mag, 3/21/16
