Review: “Angel Has Fallen”

In 2013 , 2 movies featuring White House invasions were released and “White House Down” starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx doing a cheap ass Barack Obama imitation was supposed to be the biggest hit out of the two.  In other words the “Armageddon” to the “Deep Impact”.

Even though I did not hate “White House Down”, after all it featured manly legend James Woods, “Olympus Has Fallen” Turned out to be a much better film than people expected , not to mention manlier and the film became the biggest hit out of the two.

I was surprised to see such a patriotic mainstream movie made by Angry Lefty Hollywood. One of the reasons “Reagan Era” movies are hated so much by critics & lefties then and specially now, it’s because they’re so “Patriotic” & or “Right-Wing”. And that of course is a “No-No”. You don’t salute the flag, you wipe your ass with it.

Due to the financial success of “Olympus Has Fallen” we got a sequel 3 years later titled “London Has Fallen”. The sequel pissed even more people off by having Islamic terrorists as villains. “The nerve on these mother fuckers!” “How dare they?”

 

The sequel was also a financial success & even though not as good as the original it was still a good manly action movie & I was glad they did not turned down the violence and made it PG-13 to appeal to a broader audience.

So now here we are with a third chapter of the Mike Banning Saga “Angel Has Fallen”. The movie takes a little bit of a detour from the previous two installments and takes a “Fugitive-Like” approach to the story.  It also takes itself a little bit more serious than the previous installment. But in my view if you liked the previous two films, then you’re going to like this one as well.

In this movie we see a different kind of Mike Banning. We see a Banning struggling with self doubt & battling an addiction to pain killers. The years and the battles have taken their toll on his body and he feels like an athlete who’s past his prime even though he still has a desire to play. He’s up for the director of the Secret Service job and he’s struggling with the decision to whether take the job or not.

 

Spoilers ahead so beware. The title of this movie refers to top secret service agent Mike Banning, the President’s “Guardian Angel.” Banning, along with the Secret Service, accompany the President of the United States Allan Trumbull (played by series regular Morgan Freeman) on a fishing trip. While President Trumbull is out on the water, a large group of drones attack and bomb the fuck out of everything & everyone. Everyone dies except Banning and because of Banning’s manly actions, President Trumbull survives as well.  But despite Banning’s heroics, all the evidence points to Banning being the mastermind behind this assassination attempt and with President Trumbull in a fucking coma, there is no one to say for certain what really happened. Realising that he has been set up, Banning manages to escape and uses all his manly abilities to evade the government, all the while trying to uncover who’s really responsible for the assassination attempt & who framed him.

In this movie The Deep State wants to get rid of a newly elected president and they fabricate a Russian Collusion Hoax to do so. They fabricate evidence & frame an innocent man & and the Fake News Media of course don’t question a fucking thing and they run with the story and feed the public bullshit. “Where do these guys get this stuff ?!”

The “Angel Has Fallen” cast does a good job. Aside from Gerard Butler & Morgan Freeman,  Danny Huston joins the cast and he’s always reliable & Nick Nolte is in playing Mike Banning’s father. Nolte steals the show here as “Unabomber-Like” manly survivalist who lives off the grid in the woods.

I must confess that I missed a little bit Aaron Eckhart’s “President Asher” character. Eckhart and Butler had good chemistry together but I figured the producers didn’t want three movies that featured villains trying to kill the same president.

If this were the last chapter then this franchise went down as a manly trilogy. “Angel Has Fallen” isn’t a grand slam but it’s a solid hit.

7/10