*Its an Action Movie, but still

Angel Has Fallen is the third movie in the extremely well known and famous “Fallen” Franchise. Don’t you remember Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen (Juice Rating 48/100)? Or how about the sequel London Has Fallen (33/100), does that jog your memory? Well in case you forgot this is a Gerard Butler (did you know his friends call him Jerry) led franchise where he basically has to save the world from terrorist attacks. Semi wannabe Jack Bauer on some level, and has a lot of Bourne elements as well.

This installment sees our hero Mike Banning be framed for an attempted assassination attempt on the new President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman reprising his role). Quick aside, action sequels always do this where one of the story lines is framing the guy who has saved the world over and over again, its nonsense every time. Back to the movie though we see Mike go on the run and eventually run into his estranged father (Nick Nolte) and start to unravel a bigger plot.

There is some of the best and most cohesive action of the series in this movie for sure. The first two all happen in dark hallways and it is hard to follow a lot. There are some fun explosions in “Angel” and the pace moves along pretty well. The humanization of Mike Banning though really brought a damper to this and kind of felt unnecessary. If I am going to a movie to basically see a super hero I do not want to hear about his concussions and broken ribs, just show me him kicking some ass.

Stock Watch

Stock Neutral – Gerard Butler just did his thing in this and gave another solid action performance here. He has established himself as an upper tier action star and I think he still has a few years left of these type of movies.

Stock Down – Danny Huston has the bad guy look, but I just thought he was such a boring and predictable villain in this. Maybe it was the way his character was written, but it just did not resonate at all and felt like another faceless villain.

Stock Down – Nick Nolte has been on the decline for years and his over the top mumbling performance in this feels like the nail in the coffin to me. Believe me I love 48 Hrs. and Blue Chips but this was just weird to be honest.

*A couple other tidbits

• Piper Perabo replaced Radha Mitchell as Banning’s wife and she did not have much to do so it did not feel like it made a difference.
• Morgan Freeman is just a great movie President.
• As I say in all these action movies, the hero should have died 1000 times.

Another meh installment to a pretty meh franchise finished out August for us. Hopefully with awards season coming the quality of movies starts to pick up.

Juice Rating:

*All of my Movie Ratings can be found here.