- Starring
- Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman
- Writers
- Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedikt, Christian Gudegast, Chad St. John
- Director
- Babak Najafi
- Rating
- 14A (Canada), R (United States)
- Running Time
- 99 minutes
Overall Score
Rating Summary
In anticipation of the release of Angel Has Fallen, check out this throwback review of the second film of the series, London Has Fallen (original review).
London Has Fallen starts off with the mysterious death of the British prime minister which would call upon the world’s leaders gather in London to attend his funeral. To the surprise of many attending (but not the audiences watching), terrorists unleash an attack, leaving the ruined city in total chaos. Secret Service agent-extraordinaire Banning (Butler) is once again sprung into action when he must protect President Asher (Eckhart) from all the same mindless danger and destruction. This would be in vain as once Asher is taken hostage by a group of nondescript terrorists (because who cares?), it’s up to Banning to save him once again before it’s too late.
The actual mindlessness of London Has Fallen takes quite a long time to get going as the film needlessly tries to establish stakes with a story that ultimately won’t matter and that nobody is going to care about anyway. The frenetic mindlessness of it all may be enough for some audiences, however, it was a little too much to watch this time around and felt overly gratuitous and incoherent. The distractingly bad special effects didn’t exactly help either. Again, some of the action scenes were somewhat exciting to watch, as Butler continued to prove himself, featuring a good amount of shooting, fighting, driving with the occasional explosion thrown in (as long as you turn your brain off).
The best part of London Has Fallen was the relationship between Banning and President Asher because of the great chemistry of Butler and Eckhart as Banning and Asher. This film may still be Butler and Eckhart’s show but Freeman was also good here as now Vice President Trumbull in limited screen time negotiating with the terrorists holding Asher back stateside. Those few scenes were tense, however, it would have been nice to see more of them. As a side note, it is still disappointing that his speech near the end of the trailer was not shown in the final cut.
While it’s unclear whether Angel Has Fallen will justify its existence, hopefully it can get the series back on track and be something more coherent than the hot mess that was London Has Fallen.
*still courtesy of Focus Features*
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.