BACK WITH A BANG
With Gerard Butler reprising his role as a special agent in Fallen, the action’s a blast ...pity the plot’s a damp squib
Angel Has Fallen (15) Verdict: Troubled double-agent thriller ★★★✩✩ Crawl (15) Verdict: Girl-meets-gator creature feature ★★★✩✩
GERARD BUTLER is back as hard-as-nails American secret service agent Mike Banning in the new instalment of the Fallen franchise.
In the first two films, Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen, Banning was the last man standing, protecting the American President from increasingly ridiculous assassination attempts.
But is that about to change in this third outing, Angel Has Fallen? Has Banning, the guardian angel of the White House, gone rogue? And if so, do we care?
These questions arise almost immediately after a drone-swarm attack on President Allan Trumbull (a wise and wonderful Morgan Freeman) when Agent Banning once again survives against all odds, but the rest of the secret service team end up as burnt toast.
With the President alive, but conveniently in a coma, there is no one to defend Banning, so our hero is forced to go on the run. As in the earlier movies, he is pursued by heavily armed men in black combat gear.
The nameless, helmeted fighters make the cinema screen seem like a computer game, an exercise in point-scoring rather than drama. The rat-a-tat-tat gunfire is relieved by the entertainment of seeing the usually vigorous Banning plagued by doubts, migraines and a frozen shoulder.
Battle-scarred middle-age is upon him. His dewlaps have fallen. Handfuls of painkillers, his perky younger wife Leah (Piper Perabo) and even his baby fail to cheer him up. When it comes to the couple’s relationship, the script is so cliched you can hear the clunks.
Yet Butler fans will enjoy the expensive set pieces: inky drones coming in like bats out of hell; a macho car-crash escape; a forest chase in an articulated truck; and opposing S.W.A.T. teams splattering one another all over fancy office buildings.
The story is anchored in topical politics with a plot involving private military contractors, keen to encourage more warfare. ‘Time to take the gloves off and make America great again!’ says the gung-ho Vice-President (Tim Blake Nelson, last seen as the jug-eared cowboy Buster Scruggs), channelling Trump.
The mercenaries are led by leathery veteran Wade Jennings (Danny Huston), an old army pal of Banning’s. Jada Pinkett Smith is also thrown into the mix as a FBI agent leading the chase, but her role fizzles out.
So far, so obvious. Fortunately, the film is saved by the hilarious entry of Nick Nolte, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, playing the role of Clay Banning, Mike’s long-lost father. Clay is an ill-smelling, hairy hermit, and his forest cabin is an ideal refuge when Mike goes off-grid.
THERE’S some fatherand-son re-bonding, but Clay’s main hobby, as an ex-military man and full-time nutter, is keeping the state out of his business, and he has trip-wired the surrounding forest with enough ordnance to blow up a small city.
When he detonates, the scene is a thing of joy. Even more
surprising are the final credits featuring a therapeutic moment as the two men explore their masculinity.
Where is this leading? Will the next Banning film be Vegan Has Fallen?
n WHile Angel Has Fallen cost at least $80 million to make, Crawl provides far more tension on a relatively small $13million budget, as alligators go rogue.
As toothsome as it is terrifying, Crawl tosses hungry reptiles and a snack-sized Kaya Scodelario into the eye of a ferocious Florida hurricane.
Which species will triumph as storm drains burst, flood water rises and a father and daughter are trapped in the basement of the family home with monstrous companions?
While the 10ft-long gators are moody and murderous, Scodelario’s character Haley Keller is almost a match for them, armed with a screwdriver, a wind-up torch and her skills as a university swim-team athlete. Her divorced, hard-drinking dad Dave (Barry Pepper) was previously her swimming coach, and his mantra was that Haley should be ‘an apex predator’ when racing.
This comes in useful when faced with the real thing — though i’m not convinced that a speedy crawl outpaces a predatory alligator.
The gap-toothed gators get the munchies as Haley tries to rescue the injured Dave from the basement before a further mauling.
This is not a movie for the weak of stomach. Often, the flood water looks like tomato soup after an attack, and an alligator shower scene tops the drama, which is ably directed by Alexandre Aja of Piranha 3-D.
COuPling gators with the unpredictable power of a category five hurricane has some of the genius of that other B-movie, Sharknado, where sharks fell from the sky during a flood and tornado. Here, however, what could be a stupid screamfest is more convincing thanks to Scodelario, who seesaws realistically between fear and ferocity.
The camera is right in her vulnerable but determined face, chronicling the twitch of every muscle; and her previous work in Skins, The Maze Runner and Wuthering Heights shows in her professionalism when confronted on set with what must be a Cgi puppet show.
While the main characters make endless escapes, the demise of minor characters is as predictable as it is darkly funny. Who in their right mind would try to loot sunglasses or steal a cash-dispensing machine in a near-tsunami?
As the alligators swim down main street, the criminals are looking increasingly like reptile fast food.