Houston Chronicle

‘ANGEL HAS FALLEN’ PROVES IT HAS WINGS

- BY MICK LASALLE | STAFF WRITER mlasalle@sfchronicl­e.com

It’s three years into the Trump administra­tion and Morgan Freeman is still playing the president. That’s not the usual way this goes.

Usually, movies depicting the president choose an actor something like the current president. Dick Crockett was a balding, football-loving president in “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” (1976), made during the Gerald Ford administra­tion. Bill Pullman was a youngish, light-haired president, like Clinton, in “Independen­ce Day.” Dennis Quaid was positively W.-like in “American Dreamz” (2006). And Jamie Foxx practicall­y imitated Barack Obama in “White House Down” (2013).

This tradition is so common that movies that go into production prior to an election sometimes try to anticipate the winner. Thus, “Hunter Killer,” released this January but filmed in the summer of 2016, depicted the president (Caroline Goodall) as blonde and female.

Yet in the face of that tradition, “Angel Has Fallen” has chosen not to go with a Trump-like actor in the president role — as if Gary Busey couldn’t do a New York accent! Instead they’ve elevated Freeman to the highest office. He played the Speaker of the House in the previous movie in the series, “London Has Fallen.”

But why eschew Trump? One guess: Perhaps they thought a Trump-like actor wouldn’t be sympatheti­c, or believable. Or perhaps they knew that just the idea of Trump is so contentiou­s that no one in the audience would be able to think of anything else. Supporters would consider no portrayal good enough and detractors would consider no portrayal bad enough.

In any case, whoever made this decision did the right thing because they have a good movie here, albeit one that feels grounded in an alternate-reality America. It’s saying something when it’s a toss-up which world seems more screwed up, the one on screen — with about a thousand drones attacking the president while he’s out on a lake, fishing — or the one we live in.

As the movie starts, our hero, Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is tired. He has been at it since “Olympus Has Fallen” in 2013, and he is suffering from migraines and insomnia. He’s too old for this kind of thing. And then come those drones, filling the sky like an angry flock of birds, and raining down explosives on the president and his entire Secret Service detail. The only one not targeted is Banning, and that’s because he’s been set up by the conspirato­rs to be the fall guy.

For most of “Angel Has Fallen,” the president is in a coma, the vice president is running the government, and poor Mike is on the run, trying to find the real would-be assassins before he is captured. He’s basically an escaped Lee Harvey Oswald, except he really is a patsy. Eluding capture would seem impossible, but the filmmakers concoct a series of situations that, if not believable, are so entertaini­ng that we’re happy to accept them.

Right up there in the farfetched-but-fun department is Nick Nolte, who turns up as Mike’s long-lost dad, a survivalis­t, of all things, who is — surprise, surprise — living off the grid. But then, who better then Nolte to play an old survivalis­t, or, for that matter, Gerard Butler’s father?

As for Butler, it always helps, in a movie like this, to have someone in the lead role who is better actor than he has to be. It’s a strange kind of fate to be typecast in this way. There was Richard Dix in the ’30s and Tom Berenger in the ’80s and ’90s, actors so adept at playing men of action that they get stuck in that groove. Butler can do more, but he’s so good at doing this one thing that it has become his brand. That might be a blessing or a curse, but if it’s a curse, there are worse curses.

In fact, none of the performanc­es are phoned in. Freeman shows great aptitude for the presidency and should consider running — then he could play the president on screen and off. And as the vice president, Tim Blake Nelson finally gets a role worthy of his depth.

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Lion's Gate

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