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Canberra Today 15°/18° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Movie review / ‘Angel Has Fallen’ (MA)

“No prizes for predicting how this little lot will turn out after spending an estimated $US80 million staging scads of small-arms fire, road wreckage, bodies and blowings up,” writes DOUGAL MACDONALD in his review of ‘Angel Has Fallen’.

ONCE again, Gerard Butler answers the call to arms as US Secret Service agent Mike Banning. 

If that holds any significance, you have probably formed an attachment to the character and his profession from the two previous films in the franchise. All three films have titles containing the words “has fallen”. In 2013 it was Olympus, about a terrorist kidnapping attempt in the White House, in 2016 it was London, where POTUS was at the funeral of Britain’s PM. 

They’re actioners pure and simple, following Mike’s upwardly-mobile career in the agency of the US Treasury Department that’s responsible for protecting POTUS from miscreants who think America has screwed up the election process by choosing the wrong man.

Writing credits for all three movies include Creighton Rothenberger and his wife Katrin Benedikt, who by creating Banning and his workplace looked to have established a nice little earner to support themselves in old age. This time the principal writer is Robert Mark Kamen whose career includes, as well as TV drama series, sequels from franchises including “Karate Kid” and “Lethal Weapon”.

In the Banning movies, another common element is the great actor Morgan Freeman, again playing Trumbull, who’s risen from Vice President in 2013 to POTUS this year. This time, there’s a plot afoot to privatise the Secret Service by assassinating Trumbull and framing Banning for it.

No prizes for predicting how this little lot will turn out after spending an estimated $US80 million staging scads of small-arms fire, road wreckage, bodies, blowings up and FBI insistence that the initial faked evidence is genuine. Desperately in need of a friend, Mike meets an eccentric hermit who turns out to be his dad (Nick Nolte, unrecognisable behind a forest of unkempt whiskers).

What might be the future for this franchise? It doesn’t need thinking about; just go with the flow of its mildly exciting action uncluttered with space invaders or destructive monsters.

At Dendy, Capitol 6 and Limelight

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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