Angel Has Fallen
Cert: 15 / 121 mins / Dir. Ric Roman Waugh / Trailer
It’s always darkest before the dawn, and you know you’re in the heart of the school Summer holidays when your local cinema can only free themselves from swathes of brightly coloured animated features by screening a straight-to-DVD sequel they've picked up from the £3 shelf in Sainsbury’s.
Yes, the law of diminishing returns has brought us to Angel Has Fallen, the third entry in what its star is apparently calling A Franchise*1. Gerard Butler, a feature-length Wellman advert with the focus less on vitamin supplements and more on protein shakes laced with shots of testosterone, plays Mike
SHORT
Now I’m trying to keep this review on the short side and lord knows I have a huge laundry list of complaints on why this is not a great movie. But you can tell that from the title, the poster and the cast. I still went anyway, so I'm to blame for my experience in there. Oh look the first sequence has Danny Huston in it as Gerry's boss, I wonder if he’ll turn out to be Actually A Baddie on account of not having played a genuinely sympathetic character since *checks notes* ...1995? Let’s wait and see.
So while it’s Butler’s turn here to live out every Top Gear fan’s daydream of being the Man™ surrounded by a cast that exist solely to either fear or revere him, this could just as easily be a vehicle for Wahlberg. Or for Damon. Or for Neeson. The result would be exactly the same. And far be it from me to big up the career of Dominic Cooper, but his capable, gruff, yet emotionally scarred super-security-operative was dealing with suspiciously acrobatic killer drones two bloody years ago, mate. And it wasn't good then, either. In a failed bid to redress the chromosome imbalance of the movie, Piper Perabo has been airdropped in to be Tearful Wife On Phone™ (Radha Mitchell having finally had enough after doing this twice), appearing every fifteen minutes or so to act as a visual reminder than Gerry is a) straight and b) a family man. Wahlberg would approve, if nothing else.
WATTS
Between Huston, Freeman and Butler, there’s so much phoning-in of performances*3 here that British Telecom have an exec-producer credit. The whole thing is almost spectacularly formulaic, which might not be so bad if two thirds of that cast hadn’t already pulled the exact same shit twice already with the same character names*4. But Angel Has Fallen commits that most egregious of all cinematic crimes: it’s relentlessly boring. Although I was quite surprised how linear a conspiracy thriller can get away with being these days. If there’s a man, woman or child who isn’t instinctively able to map out the film's plot structure and resolution after about four minutes then the audience for This Type Of Thing is truly secured.
We go through the motions (scowling, grunting, final mano-a-mano faceoff fight on a rooftop which is clearly an indoor soundstage) until Gerry wins. Obvs. There's a sort of mid-credits scene that appears a minute into the credits, so sure is the editor that people will not otherwise be hanging around to see it. The sizeable audience with whom I shared an auditorium still continued leaving during that. They'd seen 'directed by', that was the end, that was the deal and they were damn-well sticking to it. A patron adjacent to me sat and ate an entire full-size tube of Pringles throughout this movie, a level of heart-disease-baiting that I feel is entirely in keeping for a genre which the BBFC are rumoured to be designating a new rating of 'G – Suitable for Gammon’.
Even with its so-far patchy selection, the cinema of 2019 is a well-stocked bar boasting real ale, craft beer, fine wines, cocktails and slammers.
Angel Has Fallen is like looking at all that and asking for a pint of Carling...
Equalizer 2, Jason Bourne, Mile 22.
If you are Gerard Butler's mum.
Well, one only hopes that when this film hits DVD after the requisite 17-week period, the packaging designers are going to pre-print the 'Gifts For Father's Day' flash directly onto the cover-art, to save supermarkets a bit of time over the next fifteen years.
It is not.
That's likely.
Inexplicably, no.
Like someone in the sound-editing department has gone "No Terry, we're better than that…"
Level 1: That dancer from Dryden Vos's barge-party is in this.
*1 Gerry. Mate. There’s a Subway on my nearest high street where they regularly put notices in the window to say they’ve run out of the base ingredient, bread, and that they’ll be closed before 6pm due to staffing shortages. That Subway is part of a franchise, too. Do you see where I’m going with this? [ BACK ]
*2 I’m sure the words “President Trumball” seemed perfectly benign when this series began in 2013. I mean why wouldn’t they? But the writers are in a hole now, aware that any time Freeman’s character is referred to by name there’ll be an involuntary twitch from the audience at the point of ”President Trum-“. Bad luck lads, what can you do? I mean you certainly can't kill him off, otherwise your leading hero is shit at his own and only job. [ BACK ]
*3 Although it’s worth noting that while Freeman literally phoned in most of his turn for the second movie, this time he opts for being in a coma for most of the run-time. In that respect, his was the sole character I began to identify with. [ BACK ]
*4 Look, we know you’re not trying, Gerry, and you certainly know. But can you at least act as if you’re interested? Sorry, daft question... [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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