Cast of Angel Has Fallen- review by Film Brain

Full-text transcript of the review of the film:

[00:00:16] Hello, welcome to you project and on this episode, when the bad guys make an attempt on the president’s life, there’s only one man, Zaku. It’s Gerard Butler. An angel has full Secret Service Agent Mike Banning play by Gerard Butler says the life of President Alan Trumbull, played by Morgan Freeman after an assassination attempt by drones that wipes out Banning’s entire team, Banning wakes up in hospital to find Trumbull’s in a coma and he’s been framed as the perpetrator is arrested by FBI agent Helen Thompson, playwright Jada Pinkett Smith. Banning escapes with another attempt is made on his life and realize old friend Wade Jennings, Papa Danny Houston, his mercenaries are carrying out the attacks. Unbanning must go on the run to find the real mastermind turn for help to his estranged father, Clay, played by Nick Nolte. You might recall that in 2013, there was the battle between the two die hard in the White House movies. On the one hand, you had rond Emmerich’s White House down, which was weapons grade stupid, but at least was aware of that fact and played itself as Otey to excess, which is occasionally quite enjoyable. But I certainly wouldn’t describe it as good. But it was certainly better in comparison to Olympus has Fallen, which was also weapons grade, stupid, but also meaner, nastier and took itself way more seriously. But because Olympus came out first, it took most of the audience with it. That was the one that became the hit, whereas White House down was a big flop, despite the fact the Olympus essentially just Gerard Butler wandered around the darkened corridors, the Oval Office, just looking for people to know if the sequel came in 2016.

[00:01:50] Londoner’s Phoolan, which is one of the most ugly, hateful and just plain unpleasant action movies I can think of in recent memory. But both them were big successes at the box office. So a third film was inevitable. And because it’s that time of the year again, Gerard Butler has teamed up with his friends A Millennium Media, who are essentially the modern day equivalents to Canon Films. It’s their second film together in less than 12 months because last year they worked on Hunza Together, which was a submarine thriller where Butler spent most of it just assigning his action to a bunch of C listers. Not many people actually went and saw Hunza killer, which doesn’t really bode well for Angel as Folan If you’re wondering where the title comes from, Angel is a term for a Secret Service agent. In fact, it really doesn’t bode well for the film when even the publicity material has to remind you, it’s supposed to be a sequel to something which is certainly something that you want to see in what’s supposed to be a trilogy. There’s not really much to for here, to be honest, but it really isn’t that much of an improvement on its predecessors. When we meet Mike Banning at the beginning of this movie, it looks like his years of being in action here are finally catching up to him.

[00:03:02] And he’s got chronic pain. He’s got spinal problems. He’s suffering from insomnia. He’s getting dizzy spells. He’s popping pills like going out of fashion and generally trying to ignore the science cool of a desk job. Now he’s being offered a promotion to the head of the Secret Service. You realize during this opening act, oh, no, they’re going introspected with this, which is a big mistake, to be honest. It feels like an apology on the part of the filmmakers. They’ve realized they’ve got three films deep and they realize that banning isn’t actually a character. It’s just a vehicle for Butler to kill bad guys with. And so they try to fill him out over the course of this film. And generally, you can understand the conceit of this is to try and take apart Bany as a character and try to rebuild him again in that he’s defined by a Secret Service job, but he has that taken away from him. And now he’s going to use all those skills and turn them against the people that he’s worked alongside. And as we go through the story, we get to learn more about him, especially in terms of his long lost family. That’s where we meet Nick Nolte as his estranged father, who is, generally speaking, the most interesting part of the film, because Nick knows he apparently has been told what film he’s in and really genuinely tries knows he plays his Vietnam veteran father, has severe PTSD and ran away from his family to go live in the woods and knows he shares genuine tears upon reconciling with his son.

[00:04:39] You realize that nobody is trying to play this character very sympathetically and truthfully, despite the fact the screenplay over the course of it turns that character and his condition into a joke. He’s essentially the wacky dad who’s a conspiracy theorist and is booby trapped his hideout and yet knows he is still the best thing in it because he just goes completely wild with it. And you get the general sense that this movie and the filmmakers really think that being deep about this character deconstruction, especially because at least in one. Interview Gerard Butler actually describes this as being like the Logan of the fallen franchise, which Stadion made. No one cares about banning enough to actually really care about his back story or his history. This is an answer to a question that no one asked in the first place. And the first 20 minutes of the film are an absolute drag because, you know, the filmmakers aren’t going to pay that much attention to it once the action does kick in. And that’s precisely what happens. An intelligent movie would work those things into the action. BS in the planning would suddenly have all those problems flare up. But of course, once he starts fighting back against various mercenaries, he’s completely fine. Oh, the fact the Spolin is incredibly delicate.

[00:06:03] Oh, no problem. He’s just throwing around willy nilly. The filmmakers just don’t care about any of it. And it’s clear from the way it’s portrayed on screen, the reason that it’s so interminable to sit through is because, you know, it’s purely there to set the plot. It’s not because it furthers the characters. It’s there because the story needs those things to be there to provide a plausible amount of evidence. The banding might have gone rogue in the eyes of the other characters because he doesn’t tell anyone about his condition. Otherwise, it’s purely there to just be completely ignored. Of course, the other reason you know this is that you’ve seen this film before. Amess, who may have three CHRISETTE Reuters memos, were written by a robot force Fed action movies last twenty five years because no convention is left unturned here and frankly, it borrows more from Skyfall than it does Logan, the opening act of the film banning Dean with his various ailments. Isn’t that more? James Bond is going through the beginning of that film and how he’s a little bit past it. And the sequence where banning teams up with his father is again, very reminiscent of the sequence where Bond goes up to the old family estate and teams up with Albert Finney to set booby traps against the bad guys. But as you would guess, it’s mostly a take off of the fugitive or is that really US Marshals, which itself was a clone of the fugitive masquerading as a sequel? But there is a very big difference there in because the character in US Marshals was a secret agent.

[00:07:39] Instead of being a more formidable foe, it actually made him a much vaguer character that we couldn’t really root for. And also, he was incredibly powerful. You lost the everyman dynamic that made the fugitive work so well. I bring that up because that’s exactly the problem that you have in Angell’s Fullwood. There’s no tension about whether or not banning is going to be cool because he’s always super smart and super ahead of everyone else in the game. He knows exactly what he’s doing. The whole point of a Chase movie is that you’re genuinely afraid they’re going to get caught at some point. And that never happens over the course of this film. And really, the whole movie just feels like this regurgitated slop. All of it is cliches. Every single scene plays out in the most predictable manner you can think of. I mean, I know I’ve seen a lot of these movies, but when you’re supposed to be doing twists, I shouldn’t be going, oh, I know exactly what’s going to happen in this scene. But that happened multiple times while I was watching Angels’ for Turing. Supposedly shocking moments to give you an idea of just how transparent this movie is. They cast Danny Houston as the bad guy. Anyone who has seen an action movie in the last 10 years knows that he always plays the villain.

[00:09:00] He’s practically rends the bad guy at this point. The early scenes where he’s chumming along with Butler are laughable. The idea this is supposed to be in any way a surprise is risible. And the movie barely maintains the Schrade through the opening act. And if you’re wondering who the secret puppet master behind things is, you’re not going to take that many guesses to work that one out either. But I’m not entirely sure the audience for this really cares, because often the movie resembles an airport paperback and it seems like the target audience is exactly the people that read those kind of books, maybe not ones with Tom Clancy or James Parsons supposedly writing them, but they’re second rate impersonators. Hunter Killer was based on one of those books, just adding further credence to that. So essentially, it’s the president in danger. He is a load of things that you’ve come to expect from an action movie, but all of it feels incredibly perfunctory. The dialogue especially is just laughable in just how clumsy and mechanical it is at all times. I mean, it’s not asking for much, but at least some moments in the movie is at least in any way remotely marabout or. Stands out even in comparison to its predecessors, Angel does not. The only improvement that does have on the earlier films is that, unlike them, is less objectively hateful. There is a little bit of Russia paranoia inhibits, mostly pushed into the background and does eventually culminate in probably one of the most hilarious shots of the year where some poor CGI artist was asked the unfortunate question.

[00:10:42] Can you posit Morgan Freeman into this G20 alongside Vladimir Putin? Oh, yes, that happens in days. And I’m pretty certain that generic this is by design, because this is the archetypal Millennium Action film in that they take a stock script and just throw a bundle of money assets. Millennium starts out making direct to video action movies and they kind of move past that. You can take the company and direct a video, but you can’t take the dart to video out of the company. Even though angels form boesen 80 million dollar budget, it looks really, really cheap. It looks like it should be more home on a supermarket DVD shelf that does on the big screen. And all the things that you’ve come to expect from a millennium production are right here, especially in terms of terrible CGI effects. You only have to look at the drone sequence and how badly they’re composited into the frames or the really risible green screen work or the amateurish looking TV news reports over the course of the film, or the fact that just in general, it just feels like a lot of it takes place in abandoned locations that they can secure on the cheap. The only difference between a Millennium film made then and the Millennium Film made now mostly comes down to the Starpower.

[00:12:01] Millennium is very well known for offering big paydays to whoever wants to take their projects. And Morgan Freeman is certainly a loyal customer. He’s appeared in many a millennium production that you probably wouldn’t be able to name, aside from the fact that he’s appeared in all three of these films, aside from the he’s the only one that comes back for this because it’s a very easy payday for him. He’s pretty much admitting that already. It’s not a surprise, but he spends most of this film asleep in a hospital bed. That’s the entire second act of the movie for him. He has very little to do over the course of the film. So for Morgan Freeman, that’s when when he gets a star name for doing virtually nothing and even he looks like he doesn’t really want to be there. And there is quite a few recognizable faces here. Piver Paraiba replaces Radovic Chao as Banning’s wife and she gets more to do in this one movie the Mitchell did in the two previous installments put together. Mitchell was so peripheral in those films. I’m pretty sure that most audiences don’t even remember that she was in the less line will notice that she’s been replaced. So in that way, Perabo is an adequate replacement. But that also speaks to the will nature of this franchise. If you haven’t seen the earlier films, you needn’t worry about it because Angel acts like a standalone NC for the most part in exactly the same weird way as London did in the.

[00:13:27] Yeah, the characters come back and there is the merest semblance of continuity. But for the most part they don’t reference or callback to anything in the early movies. No character stops and goes, Hey, this is really for to the last time someone tried to assassinate our president and Banning helped us out. No one does that at all. And that kind of has a certain amount of elegance to it. It’s not really calling attention to the fact that it’s doing the same movie three times, but it also points you towards the fact that no one really cares on this movie and doesn’t expect you to either. They just expect you to watch it and forget it. Jada Pinkett Smith stars as an FBI agent who is introduced. This may be a thorn in banning side and is supposedly on its tail, but mostly after she’s introduced essentially becomes a bunch of scenes where Pinkett Smith goes to locations that Banning has been at. Unbanning just does her job for her. It’s essentially just her doing a load of exposition. In case you missed the plot the first time around and most of the other actors are stuck in similarly thankless roles. You’ve got Timberlake Nelson as the vice president and even Butler himself doesn’t look like he’s particularly enthusiastic. He just seems to be growling through the motions. And I know the butler can be a talented actor given the right role.

[00:14:51] But let’s face it, he has an anti quality control when it comes to picking his scripts, of which this is a continuation of and his range scenes are just degenerated because of it. He seems really typecast as this bread and butter action persona and he just seems kind of bored with it. Yeah. Butler I think it might be time to stretch your legs a little bit, but fundaments. For an action film, this falls apart in the action department, this film is directed by Rick Roman War, who is a stunt coordinator turned director, and he holds the superior dart to video flick film, which put him on the map to direct the Dwayne Johnson flick snitch, which had a chase with a big rig which is effectively replicated here. And you would think, given his background, that he wouldn’t know what he was doing. We’ve discovered in recent years that some of the best action directors are people that came from the stunt. World War is apparently not one of those people because it’s clear he has no idea what he’s doing, especially given that most of the film has the big set pieces take place in the dark at night in the woods, which is perhaps the least conducted environment to an action film I can possibly think of, especially given the fundamental thing about an action film, is that you can actually see it. Take the aforementioned chase sequence. Once banning drives into the forest, you can’t see any of what’s going on.

[00:16:19] All you’re getting is indistinguishable shots of lights in tree lines. There’s no sense of geography or spacing or where anything is in relation to each other. Intermixed with shots of Butler in the cab, changing gears that again, you can barely fathom. And there’s some big practical stunts in that set piece. They tip over cause they tip over the big three. Those seem like they took a lot of effort to set up, but you barely make them out. It’s so relentlessly murky earlier than that. There’s a sequence where Banning is surrounded by people in the back of a car and he has to essentially fight off all of his captors. At the same time, you’ve seen variations of this sequence, but certainly never as terrible as the one here, which again takes place in the dead of night. And also it’s just a total incomprehensible blur. Even in the previous entries. I don’t recall the action sequences, which often looks a bit clumsily staged, looking quite as bad as they do in this film, at least in the sequence where Banning is with his father, at least when he detonated the explosives. You can actually see what’s happening. It provides a little bit of welcome illumination. The only standout set piece in this film is the finale in a hospital where there’s this big shootout. And that’s mostly because the sound engineers really seem to be finding new and inventive ways of trying to deafen you with Adobe at most mics.

[00:17:50] And at least then that takes place in daylight. So at least you can work out what is supposed to be happening. But even the final phase of the film is just a total let down. I literally blinked and I’m pretty sure I just missed half of the fight. It’s that underwhelming considering it’s supposed to be a big personal fight between two supposed best friends. The tone of the movie is genuinely set by its opening sequence, which is one of those fake out. Oh, it was a training exercise, which is code in action movie language for this is going to be really, really boring. And guess what? That’s exactly what it is, because that’s what happens when you have a plot you don’t care about. Mix with action that you cannot see. Angels form is maybe a slight improvement on his predecessor if you feeling charitable. But that mostly speaks to just how bad this franchise is and the fact that it’s the least ideologically toxic out of all of them. If you will surprise this series, Mashco, the three films, frankly, so am I. I think that none of these movies have ever been good. They all look like souped up doright trivial action flicks where even the action is haphazardly represented. They’re not even good as throwbacks. If you want one of those put on a canon film, because the difference between a Canon film and a Millennium film is that a canon film is so utterly ridiculous that you can genuinely have fun with it.

[00:19:18] This is not what it really takes itself so seriously, with the exception of the fact that it has a comedy made credit scene, which is perhaps the only remotely surprising thing about this movie, which is otherwise completely, indifferently assembled right down to the action sequences. And even Butler himself looks like he’s getting long in the tooth for this kind of thing. And frankly, I’m starting to feel the same way. Angel is for maybe less unpleasant than the previous two entries in this inexplicable trilogy is also the least memorable. Everything about Angel feels like it’s going through the motions, especially with a stock script. There’s a storm, predictable cliches that you’ve probably seen before. And Bazza film Skyfall in The Fugitive. Among them served the lukewarm soup, as usual, for a film for Millennium, despite the high budget feels like a Dorotka video. Cheapy with dodgy CGI and slumming star names, clearly grabbing big checks for thin rolls as a throwback. Actioner at Towsley Missiles because the setpiece choppy, massive incomprehensibility not helped by the fact that a lot of it takes place at night in the woods, the barely visible, this series hasn’t fallen from grace. It’s always been pretty bad, but janitress shouldn’t be this inexcusably boring, if you like this review than assign yourself over to my patron. I can see my reviews early, among other perks, including access to my Dischord server. But until next time, I’m Matthew Buck fading out.