Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *

Cast: Gerard Butler, Piper Perabo, Morgan Freeman, Fredrick Schmidt, Danny Huston, Lance Reddick, Rocci Williams, Harry Ditson, Ori Pfeffer, Michael Landes, Mark Arnold, Kerry Shale, Tim Blake Nelson, Jada Pinkett Smith, Nick Nolte.

Occasionally you just have to sit back and be astonished at how a film manages to be given the green light to see the light of day, how, despite the odds, it morphs into a franchise that keeps going, and how it hooks in one of the most respected and gracious actors of his time, the honourable Morgan Freeman, to what is surely no more than a down market version of No Way Out, a simplistic, basic thriller that leaves a taste so thin in the mouth that it could be mistaken for gruel.

Oddly enough, Angel Has Fallen sees Gerard Butler return for a third time to the role of Mike Banning, a secret service agent to whom the world’s criminals and terrorists seem to discount when planning the ultimate point of anarchy, the death of the President of the United States of America. Not only is the plot hardly worth a raised eyebrow, but there, in the midst of every gun fight, is the expected repetition, the nuts and bolts of every film that espouses to the political thriller genre.  

Three tales into this franchise and it would not be out of the realms of sympathy for Gerard Butler, a hugely likeable actor, but then is it difficult to feel anything but concern for any actor when films such as Angel Has Fallen continue to be made.

The problem being in this third film in the series is that everything about it was expected, especially when it comes to the feeling of age and understanding that your career is at a crossroads, that every ache and pain is compounded by the knowledge that at any moment you have to make a life and death choice which could plunge the nation into mourning, or into war.

Few action thrillers succeed by the third outing for the protagonist, and when it does in the case of Die Hard, it raises the bar so high that anything attempting to be half as good, just falls flat, and so it is with Angel Has Fallen. It would be cruel to suggest that the film is dull, for that is not true, it has the explosions, it has the suggestion of action, but not enough to make the heart quicken and the pulse dare to show its face above a beat a minute. The fact that the film is so unfortunately formulaic is enough to recognise how poor the outcome is bound to be, and in that aspect the viewer will not be disappointed; the only time during the entire experience that they won’t be.

Harmless but uninspiring, inoffensive to the senses, and ultimately banal, Angel fell a long time ago, it just doesn’t seem to have found the bottom of the pit just yet.

Ian D. Hall