Gerard’s body on line again
ANGEL HAS FALLEN (MA15+) Starring: Gerard Butler, Piper Perabo, Morgan Freeman, Jada Pinkett. Saving the world by dropping the Mike
WE are now three movies into Gerard Butler’s inexplicably popular series of aggressive action-adventure thrillers, and his character is still yet to find a cure for his chronic case of IBS (that’s irritable bodyguard syndrome, in case you were wondering).
Yep, that’s right: Secret Service superman Mike Banning (Butler) is as crabby and stabby as ever, having spent so many years in the White House ready to jump in front of any bullet heading the President’s way.
As Angel Has Fallen opens, Mike is making noises hinting he might soon be taking a desk job to keep the wife (Piper Perabo) happy, now they’ve had a baby and all.
Of course, that will never happen. Anyway, we only ever meet the family this early in the picture on the tacit understanding they will be terrorised later on. You know, by baddies needing a bargaining chip with Mike.
Those baddies? They are ex-military henchmen for hire who could be doing a number on the US democratic process at the behest of election-meddling Russian types. Or they could be following orders from someone inside America’s borders.
Doesn’t matter, really. What does matter is that these mysterious villains have put US President Allan Trumbull (franchise regular Morgan Freeman) into a coma, and have framed Mike for the mass killing of the entire POTUS security detail.
Just like 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen and 2016’s London Has Fallen, Butler’s new movie is as dumb as a pile of bricks, but still stacks up on pure adrenaline-extraction grounds.
This it achieves largely on the back of one truly impressive set-piece sequence — in which scores of armed attack drones are unleashed during a presidential fishing trip — and plenty of regressive plot twists that will have you grinning goofily against your will.
As for Mike, well, our hardline hero spends most of Angel Has Fallen on the run, reloading weapons, rearranging faces and resisting arrest with ludicrous ease.
Oh, and you also get to meet his dad (Nick Nolte), a wild and whiskery militiaman who lives off the grid and loves playing Abe Simpson to Mike’s Homer.