With the award season officially over (and Leo finally has that Oscar), we’re now settling into the doldrums of the early season fare. And what better way to dirty up your palate than a couple of back-to-back Gerard Butler stinkers, Gods of Egypt and London Has Fallen?

But I must make a confession: Gerard Butler is one of my guilty pleasures. He’s an intelligent man who has a reputation for appearing in terrible movies, most of which have a nasty, insalubrious edge to them. Compared to the other classically handsome, well-dressed leading men that largely populate multiplexes these days, Butler is a bit rougher. His glowering appearance gives him a disreputable air onscreen, often portraying an unreconstructed ladies’ man, so macho that he will start a take clean shaven and finish it fully bearded.

His saving grace is that he flings himself wholeheartedly at any role, and is usually the best part of any dross that he’s starring in. Having blown his law career as a younger man, he chanced his arm at acting and is now headlining big, dumb Hollywood blockbusters. He makes no apology for that, which is his most endearing quality. He gives the impression of a man, now unencumbered by normal life, living the dream for all the geeks out there who ever fancied themselves as a movie star.

Let’s take a look at some of Butler’s greatest…ugh…hits.

1. Phantom of the Opera (Joel Schumacher, 2004)

This hot-and-heavy adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical megahit is a nostalgia piece, blasting you back into the ’80s from the first cheesy guitar riff of the title tune. The film looks like a bordello bedroom, with Schumacher lavishly spending much of the film’s substantial budget on gaudy costumes and extravagant set pieces. That’s a good thing, and frankly I think all films should include a falling chandelier.

Butler plays LeRoux’s Phantom as a murderous stalker, looking like he genuinely can’t wait to get his big hairy hands all over co-star Emmy Rossum’s supple young body. Under the lascivious direction of Schumacher, the starlet gives as good as she gets, giving Butler both barrels of a “let’s get it on” stare in most of their scenes. She also wears lots of frocks that fall down at the shoulder whenever she gets excited.

2. 300 (Zack Snyder, 2007)

Butler’s major breakthrough and most iconic performance came in Zack Snyder’s highly stylized interpretation of Frank Miller’s comic. He plays King Leonidas, a fierce Greek warrior who leads the legendary 300 Spartan troops into battle against the vast invading army of a decadent Persian pervert. 300 is infamously homoerotic, and Butler’s the straightest thing on the screen. He channels Brian Blessed as the noble king, maintaining his dignity despite spending much of the film dressed in red underpants. If your eyes can take the artifice of Snyder’s vision, it’s a true spectacle, and nothing can undermine the rousing nature of the old myth.

3. P.S. I Love You (Richard LaGravenese, 2007)

Another big hit for Butler in this club-footed and contrived chick flick. Butler play Gerry, an Oirish fella married to Holly (Hilary Swank). After Gerry dies suddenly, Holly is guided by a series of letters penned by her deceased hubby before his untimely departure, encouraging her to start living again.

Part of Holly’s journey takes her to Gerry’s homeland, shot like a Guinness commercial. Her potential new love interests include an Irish pub singer who looks creepily like Butler, and a mentally unbalanced Harry Connick Jr. This is queasy, unintelligible guff.

4. The Ugly Truth (Robert Luketic, 2009)

The pitch for this gravely misconceived rom-com could be: what if a man who hates women falls for a woman who hates herself? Butler plays Mike, the misogynist host of a crass relationship TV show for guys. His shtick is a little like a blue collar version of T.J. Mackie from Magnolia, without the good writing. He ends up butting heads and eventually bumping uglies with his new producer, Abby (Katherine Heigl), a shrieking, neurotic, self-hating woman-child. Despite her initial gag-reflex at Mike’s antics, she can’t help falling for his masculine “charms”. Together, they’re the most unappealing romantic pairing since Fred and Rosemary West.

5. Gamer (Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor, 2009)

Although almost universally panned by critics, Gamer has a lot going for it. It’s a slick, brutal piece of business, combining elements of The Running Man and The Last Starfighter, imagining an all too plausible dystopia where people play video games using real-life avatars.

Butler plays Kable, a death row inmate controlled by a kid in an ultraviolent Call of Duty-esque shoot em up, which is televised to huge, baying audiences. Kable’s wife is trapped in a Sims-like game called Society, where closet rapists get to play out their most craven desires with living, breathing sprites from behind their semen-and-Dorito-dust encrusted keyboards.

Butler’s Kable is a typical Butler-esque action hero: a wronged man seeking retribution by murdering lots of people in a grisly fashion.

6. Law Abiding Citizen (F Gary Gray, 2009)

A throwback to the hackneyed Nineties trope of a criminal mastermind pulling the strings from behind bars. The moral centre of this gratuitously violent thriller feels a little off—Butler’s architect Clyde Shelton should be the protagonist, having witnessed his wife and daughter’s murder at the hands of two scuzzy home invaders. Thanks to a convoluted and far-fetched script, Law Abiding Citizen manages to turn him into a sadistic maniac orchestrating a series of gruesome murders from his cell.

7. Olympus Has Fallen (Antoine Fuqua, 2013)

Cruel, humorless and xenophobic, Olympus Has Fallen is a despicable piece of Right Wing trash. The dastardly North Koreans take over the White House in a spectacular bloodbath, holding Aaron Eckhart’s snivelling President hostage. The crux of the villain’s plan is that Americans won’t be able to tell evil North Koreans apart from kindly South Koreans. Bloody foreigners, all look alike!

Luckily, Butler’s special agent Mike Banning is on hand to save the day, with his penchant for stabbing people in the head. The whole film has a morbid fascination with massive head trauma, with countless skulls popped. Banning even tells the lead baddie to keep one bullet for himself, because otherwise Banning’s going to knife him in the brain. Perhaps that’s the best thing for him, because surely any terrorist ready to take time out from an all-out assault on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to shoot up the stars and stripes must truly hate freedom, and deserves a length of cold steel driven into his cranium.

Amidst a busy week of caucuses and Presidential debates, America receives another blunt force reminder that lest we ever lose sight of our god-given kick-assness there will always be an action film depicting our sheer superhuman patriotic determination to take down all terrorists who threaten us.

This reminder comes in the form of London Has Fallen, the fast-paced follow-up to 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen. Though, while the inclination of action films isn’t necessarily toward truthfulness—and moviegoers’ patriotism not to be taken for granted—London Has Fallen puts American exceptionalism on so high a pedestal it’s practically the stuff of fairy tales. Audiences looking for explosions and quippy wisecracks won’t be let down, but this film will not be winning us points with our allies anytime soon. As a depiction of not only how two Americans (one of them the President) can take on a major terrorist cell, but how much more competently they do it without the help of the government officials of the country they are located in, London Has Fallen is a cartoonish action flick cashing in on the attachments its characters built in the previous film and layering on American bravado at the expense of all other nations.

Directed by Babak Najafi, an Iranian-Swedish filmmaker without much to his name, the film starts at a large wedding party in Pakistan. We meet Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul), an arms dealer who advises his eldest son, who has recently offed one of their competitors, not to forget to take out their enemy’s family as well. Clearly this guy holds grudges. Next minute a drone attacks the wedding. Two years later, back in America, President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) is two years into his second term and now very close with his Head Secret Service Agent, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler doing his best to stifle that Scottish accent), who saved his ass in the last film. Mike’s expecting a baby with wife Leah (Rhada Mitchell) and contemplating his retirement.

The unexpected death of the British Prime Minister urges the President to quickly fly off to London to attend the funeral. Banning and Secret Service Director Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett reprising her role) don’t like the unknowns involved in last-minute travel, but Banning’s the best of the best, and he accompanies the President to the UK. Those who’ve seen the last film (or even the trailer) will easily guess where the story heads. Barkawi has picked his moment to exact revenge for the drone attack that killed his daughter. One by one he picks off the world’s leaders as they arrive in London, destroying much of the city’s historical landmarks in the process.

His minions appear from the crowds in such high numbers it would indicate almost no one seen thus far in London is actually a citizen. The police aren’t who they seem. Motorcyclists emerge to chase down the President as Mike rushes him back to the helicopter. They aren’t in the helicopters long when missiles down them. The death toll and destruction is close to comic-book movie status. As London goes on lockdown, Mike and President Asher make their way through the streets—Mike’s apparent built-in GPS guiding them—eventually connecting with an MI6 agent Jacquelin (Charlotte Riley) who suspects a mole (there’s always a mole). Banning and President Asher continue to defeat the odds for the rest of the film.

Butler and Eckhart do have a sort of chemistry, the kind I imagine frat boys everywhere have, and watching them run around together keeps up the energy of the film. Butler’s double chin might indicate his skill-levels in sleep deprived continuous fighting shouldn’t quite be what they are in the film, but his extreme kills hold a certain satisfaction that allows one to forgive his appearance.

The film’s real faults are unsurprising. In a world where terrorism is so very real, one might think Hollywood would veer away from the hyperbolic terrorism oft depicted in action films. Whereas fairy tales use unrealistic monsters to make everyday life seem safer, these sorts of action films are starting to feel almost insensitive to the realities of the world. Barkawi is possibly the most successful terrorist ever, his recruitment efforts being apparently so amazing there is never a corner Banning runs around where he isn’t met with a ceaseless mass of terrorist drones attacking him.

Like in the first film, at one point Mike yells out “RPG,” which for the uninitiated stands for “rocket propelled grenade,” though for this weapons-illiterate viewer I’d just have soon thought he was proclaiming his entrance into a “role playing game.” The camera follows like a first-person shooter for much of the action, bullets whizzing by, explosions happening casually.

The British government and intelligence are depicted as barely capable, not only being completely oblivious beforehand that an attack is being planned, but consistently being told by the American government officials back in the U.S. what the sitch is. And as much as EVERYONE likes to see Morgan Freeman in governmental positions (here he’s now the Vice President), the whole suits-in-the-situation-room film tactic for solving major global crises just doesn’t hold up anymore.

Many could find themselves enjoying London Has Fallen, but one has to wonder if they should. By taking out other world leaders, Barkawi insinuates they are the U.S.’s “family,” a fair depiction of U.S. allies, but the casualness with which they are killed and the disrespect paid to Britain plays into an oft-used tone for action films: America is the best. Just as Mike Banning asks his MI6 friend at one point in the film about civilian losses and she remarks they are unfortunately high, as though she’s remarking on a price increase on her favorite shampoo, so is it impossible to have any real feeling for the film or its outcome. There’s nothing less patriotic than desensitizing terrorism and in an age of globalization, London Has Fallen feels stale and outdated.