Angel Has Fallen

The best of the …Has Fallen series, Angel Has Fallen follows Gerard Butler’s Mike Banning as he’s forced to go on the run after a shadowy villain frames him for the attempted assassination of the President (Morgan Freeman’s Allan Trumbull). It’s clear that Angel Has Fallen improves steadily as it goes along, as filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh kicks off the proceedings with a nigh incoherent action sequence that doesn’t inspire much confidence – with the movie, beyond that point, seguing into a midsection that benefits substantially from Butler’s typically sturdy performance and a smattering of better-than-expected set-pieces (including a thrilling scene detailing the aforementioned attempt on the President’s life). And although the 121 minute running time admittedly does result in a handful of lulls along the way, Angel Has Fallen builds to a climactic third act that fares much, much better than one might’ve expected – and yet even here Waugh’s reliance on jittery camerawork and needless closeups threatens to diminish the picture’s overall impact. The end result is an entertainingly erratic piece of work that benefits substantially from its star’s personable performance (as well as the efforts of a solid supporting cast), and it’s impossible not to hope that Butler keeps cranking these movies out in the years to come (ie the existence of a relatively down-to-earth franchise, particularly in this era of larger-than-life blockbusters, is nothing short of refreshing).

*** out of ****