Angel Has Fallen (2019) - Movie Review

Under normal circumstances, I would question this film’s very existence. The latest from modern B-movie kingpins Millennium Films, starring perennial B-movie favourite Gerard Butler, is the continuation and (hopeful) finale to a series that didn’t even need to be a series in the first place. Hell, after the utter bullshit that was the previous entry in London Has Fallen, I was outright dreading having to sit through more straight-faced jingoism.

But then again, as someone who does love a good redemptive sequel, maybe replacing the bulk of the writer’s room and the director’s chair for this follow-up means we can leave behind the alarmingly blatant racism of Gerard Vs. Fuckheadistan, and get back to the hard-hitting action thrills that made Olympus solid, if not entirely memorable. That’s the theory, at least.

A theory that starts to fall apart right from the opening, where we see Butler looking ready to keel over before any bullets have even been fired. His impossibly tired expression is his one mode for the entire production, one shared by Morgan Freeman and yet oddly not shared by Nick Nolte as our lead’s reclusive father. But in fairness, that’s part of the point of his character arc here: He is tired.

He’s been through hell over the last two films, and while his mental health is that special Hollywood brand that waxes and wanes as the plot requires, the fact that it’s emphasised at all gives it some edge. That, and the now-standard musings on how war never changes but always changes those who wage it. It focuses more on the emotional side of our lead rather than strictly with his action hero cred, meaning we’re given less of the precious showmanship that made his turn in London even less appealing than it already was.

Of course, being satisfied purely by the absence of writing grievances that shouldn’t have been in the series to begin with isn’t going to happen; this action thrillers needs excitement to make its own case, and it’s here where the other big problem with London rears its ugly head: The action beats are insanely boring.

We open on a training exercise with paintball guns, so that we get artificial action that doesn’t need to affect the plot that comes after it in true hack fashion, and when Butler isn’t fighting in badly-lit night-time shootouts, he’s just standing to the side of varyingly computerised explosions. The only thing weirder than how inconsistent the CGI work in this thing, it’s how Nolte potentially racks up a higher body count than the fucking action lead over the course of this two-hour drudge.

Then there’s what can charitably considered a plot, which is basically action movie sausage taken from numerous, recognisable parts. We’ve got the Presidential assassination premise left over from the other Fallen entries, but we also have strained attempts to pit everyone else in the movie against our lead akin to Jack Bauer by way of Taken 3, which shares a writer with this in Robert Mark Kamen.

Actually, speaking of Taken 3, this film also has the same issue where the simple act of casting a particular actor (or actors in this case) ends up spoiling who will be the turncoat later on in the story. It’s painfully listless already, so having plot details this telegraphed only makes things feel even slower to get through.

Oh, and it tries to be topical about American/Russian relations in its main plot, but only by transplanting real-world notions into a scenario where none of the key signifiers are, making it look out-of-context and try-hard.

It’s an action thriller where the action is bland, the thrills are non-existent, and the kindest thing I can say to it is that at least it isn’t an utterly racist piece of garbage. Not exactly a high mark to reach.