Butler’s Fallen to new low
Angel Has Fallen
(R16, 120 mins) Directed by Ric Roman Waugh Reviewed by
At this juncture, surely even Gerard Butler’s closest friends and relations have forgotten that he was once a very promising dramatic leading man.
Hell, I’ve seen Butler doing Shakespeare, holding his own against Ralph Fiennes with all his phasers set to ‘‘emote’’, belting out rhyming couplets like he meant every word of it. But no. Butler the actor is a distant memory now. And in the Has Fallen series, he may just have found the vehicle that will forever define him. It’s his Rambo, his Terminator, his Street Fighter – just without the wit, jokes and self-awareness.
Butler is Mike Banning. We first met Banning in 2013, in the illtempered, but oddly hilarious
Olympus Has Fallen, in which we were told Banning is an-ex Army Ranger, now working as head of the US President’s security detail. When a troublesome posse of rogue North Koreans took over the White House, it was up to Banning to get the President to safety while killing pretty much everyone else on screen with his bare hands.
Olympus was followed in 2016 by
London Has Fallen, in which, ditto, but with Pakistani terrorists, in London.
And now, for a third and quite possibly final time, Banning finds himself next to the president while a gang of nasties try to kill him. At which point, you might wonder if
the president is starting to think that Banning is a bit of a jinx and might replace him with someone who’s just less of a total crapmagnet. But no, when the flock of explosive drones comes whizzing into a presidential fishing trip, killing everybody but Banning and Morgan Freeman’s President Trumble, does it occur to anyone that Banning might just be the problem? Well, yes. In a move that will draw a deep sigh from anyone who has seen The Fugitive or Shooter, Banning is framed for the attempted assassination and is forced to try to prove his innocence while simultaneously protecting his family, the comatose President and his dad, played – in a cameo of such surpassing dementedness it momentarily had me almost enjoying this benighted pile of guano – by Nick Nolte, looking for all the world like the Unabomber and Santa Claus had a baby.
Listen, there will always be a place in my heart for a good, dumb, action flick. The middle-aged white man, saving the world from racial stereotypes with nowt but his guns and fists is a trope nearly as old as cinema. I’m even sure it is still possible to make that film well. Just. And Angel Has Fallen does occasionally flicker with something that almost looks like competence. The script’s nods to Banning’s painkiller addiction is a promising diversion, soon abandoned. Meanwhile, the cast – Freeman, Nolte, Lance Reddick, Piper Perabo et al – could do so much more with dialogue that wasn’t quite so flightless and reductive. But this is mostly just a tired, lazy, unambitious and only ever unintentionally funny plod through the cliches.