{"id":44299,"date":"2019-08-26T12:49:02","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T16:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=44299"},"modified":"2019-08-26T12:49:57","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T16:49:57","slug":"angel-has-fallen-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/08\/angel-has-fallen-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Angel Has Fallen \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\n\u201cFallen\u201d series is one that\u2019s hard to track in an alphabetical listing because it\u2019s\nthe first word that keeps changing with each new installment. That\u2019s just one\nway in which this series is an inconvenience. Another is that 2013\u2019s \u201cOlympus\nHas Fallen\u201d detracted from the superior White-House-in-turmoil actioner \u201cWhite\nHouse Down,\u201d which unjustly bombed presumably because it had the gall to come\nout three months later. And I\u2019ll throw in another: these movies always feature initial\nattack scenes so violent that I can\u2019t help but feel that no matter how many\nterrorists Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) kills in turn, the\nwar is already lost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasted two hours of a\nperfectly good day off last week watching \u201cOlympus Has Fallen\u201d for research\nwhen all I really needed to do was discern that Banning is a stand-in for John\nMcClane or Jack Bauer or any other impossibly competent action hero. After\nwatching that film (and highlights of 2016\u2019s \u201cLondon Has Fallen,\u201d which was not\navailable to me in full), I was dreading having to see third installment \u201cAngel\nHas Fallen.\u201d Fortunately those low expectations worked to the film\u2019s benefit,\nbecause I didn\u2019t detest it as much as I thought I would. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plot sees Banning\u2019s\nbody gradually failing him following years of President-saving. He may have to\nsettle for a dreaded desk job (as the director of the Secret Service, so cry me\na river), even though his reason for being is to protect President Trumbull (Morgan\nFreeman). An attempt is made on Trumbull\u2019s life that leaves the President in a\ncoma and 18 Secret Service agents dead, with Banning as the lone survivor. Evidence\nhas been planted that makes it look like Banning is behind the attack, so the\nsecond act of the movie is more of a \u201cFugitive\u201d knockoff than a \u201cDie Hard\u201d\nknockoff. Who framed Banning? Could it possibly be defense contractor Wade\nJennings (Danny Huston), the only suspect? Someone powerful is helping the\nperson behind the attack, could it possibly be Vice President Kirby (Tim Blake\nNelson), again the only suspect? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, just when the\nmovie seems to be at its most uninspired, along comes Nick Nolte as Banning\u2019s\nestranged father. Someone forgot to tell Nolte that this film is disposable\ngarbage, because he puts all he has into this role. I was hanging on his every\nword, no easy feat considering his snoring-while-awake voice. The man is funny\nand emotional enough to elevate the material to where, for a few minutes, I was\nready to give this movie an overall positive review. It didn\u2019t last, and I\nwould probably would have thought better of it anyway because so much about\nthis movie is painfully by-the-numbers, but in those scenes it makes an\nadmirable effort to earn my approval. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve ever seen a\n\u201cFallen\u201d movie before, you can probably predict the pattern of the action: big\nviolent initial attack by the bad guys, then some stealthy intimate attacks by\nBanning as he fights to undercut the bad guys without drawing attention to\nhimself, then an escalating series of body counts as the bad guys learn they\nhave to take out one last threat, and finally a big shootout at the end where\nthe bad guys have a seemingly endless army of henchman who are willing to\nbetray their country and not one of them can take out the tired, wounded\nBanning. You can probably predict the pattern of non-violent behavior too:\nwhere one-liners will come in, how the cat-and-mousing between Banning and the\nbad guys will go, how the reconciliation between Banning and his father will\nplay out. The passion from Nolte is a nice surprise that lends the movie some\nmuch-needed respectability, but otherwise \u201cAngel Has Fallen\u201d is exactly the\nmovie I expected it to be, and I expected a tiresome thriller. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAngel Has Fallen\u201d is rated R for\nviolence and language throughout. Its running time is 121 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             The \u201cFallen\u201d series is one that\u2019s hard to track in an alphabetical listing because it\u2019s the first word that keeps changing with each new installment. That\u2019s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}