Falling into unwatchable territory

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This article was published 24/08/2019 (2592 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Angel (Gerard Butler’s code name) has fallen in the third instalment of this derivative action franchise, which centres on Mike Banning, a U.S. Secret Service agent who has very bad luck with his presidents. The cast and crew aren’t doing that well, either.

Olympus Has Fallen — which came out in the 2013, the same year as that other president-in-jeopardy movie, White House Down — started off with a massive attack on D.C., with national landmarks like the Washington Monument and the White House getting smashed.

This formula was reprised in 2016 in London has Fallen, with Westminster Abbey, Chelsea Bridge and a double-decker bus bearing the brunt.

All this destruction was followed up with some cathartic one-man vengeance, mostly involving fire fights in which basically everyone who isn’t Gerard Butler gets killed.

In the first two films, Mike’s ire was directed against Korean terrorists and Pakistani arms dealers.

This time out, the threat comes from within the United States, which at least cuts the series’ streak of xenophobia. In Angel Has Fallen, sinister forces want to assassinate the American president because he’s against needless wars and opposes the use of private military contractors. This allows Mike to blow up, shoot and stab a whole lot of people in the service of peace, a neat little narrative trick.

Mike is on a fishing retreat with the prez when a deadly drone strike takes out the security detail, leaving the president in a coma and putting Mike in the frame for the attack. Wrongly accused and arrested, Mike escapes custody and goes on the lam to find the real culprits. While the first Banning movie riffed on Die Hard, this story borrows from The Fugitive.

Danny Huston is Wade Jennings, one of Mike’s old friends from the army days. He’s now a mercenary who hasn’t had a lot of work since “that Blackwater s— went down.” (This bid for topicality is a bit jarring in what is otherwise a preposterously unrealistic movie.)

Aaron Eckhart, who played the president in the first two entries, has reached his two-term limit and been replaced by Morgan Freeman as Allan Trumbull, who was Speaker of the House in the first outing and the veep in the second.

Piper Perabo has also replaced Radha Mitchell as Mike’s wife, Leah, a switch that’s barely noticeable, since the role is more or less confined to taking phone calls while holding down the home front, an action-movie cliché so common it’s been parodied by comedian Amy Schumer.

Butler, who tends to power through these movies with gruff stoicism, has also changed. He’s looking older and a little beat-up, and there is an attempt to unpack his character, giving him some new vulnerabilities. Mike is popping pain pills, and we soon learn his dogged need to protect his commander-in-chief might stem from past trauma, specifically father issues.

The narrative — involving a big team of scripters and possibly notes on a dinner napkin — is rudimentary, and the hidden conspiracy is easy to guess. The case against Mike and the case he makes to prove his innocence are barely sketched in, and the final act doesn’t make a lick of sense. Clearly, the simplistic story is just a line to hang the fight scenes on.

In good action flicks that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but director Ric Roman Waugh’s action sequences are mediocre.

They have a ramped-up, jittery look, but they don’t feel urgent. A car chase involving an 18-wheeler has some novelty value — expect lots of jackknifing — but the gun battles are rote. They are also frequently incomprehensible and just hard to see. (Why so many smoke bombs?)

On top of this technical incompetence is a problem with tone. A movie this silly shouldn’t also be grim. The only person who seems to be having any fun is Nick Nolte as a reclusive mountain man — Mike jokingly suggests he’s one step away from the Unabomber. Nolte embraces his inner coot in ways both funny and rather poignant.

(If you like Nolte, stay for a bizarre little end-credits sequence. Perhaps recognizing the lack-of-fun problem, the filmmakers have added a scene that mixes up PTSD, male bonding and light comedy.)

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca