Angel Has Fallen (2019)
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
After a treacherous attack, Secret Service agent Mike Banning is charged with attempting to assassinate President Trumbull. Chased by his own colleagues and the FBI, Banning begins a race against the clock to clear his name.
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25 films that influenced Angel Has Fallen
What critics say influenced Angel Has Fallen
Angel Has Fallen may not be appreciably better than the first two installments of this lower-middle-range Mission: Impossible wannabe franchise, but it's actually more fun — first and foremost because of a vastly amusing turn by Nick Nolte as Gerard Butler's eccentric Vietnam vet old coot father.
Thus far, the franchise has taken an approach similar to the Mission: Impossible series, cycling out a new director with each installment, starting with Antoine Fuqua and moving to Babak Najafi, who handed the baton to former stuntman Ric Roman Waugh.
While not as operatic or elegant as John Woo’s output from that era, there are clear parallels and references to “Hard Boiled,” “Hard Target” and even his maligned “Mission: Impossible” sequel.
How many masks have come off in Mission: Impossible movies?
His car chases and shootouts have a rugged economy to them — no one will confuse Angel with the inspired pyrotechnics of a Mission: Impossible , but there’s nevertheless an enjoyable, brutal precision to the action that should appeal to hardcore genre fans.
This setup gives Roman Waugh a chance to send Banning off the grid on a The Fugitive-inspired runaway, which reunites him with his reclusive, long-lost father — a veteran who resents the military for essentially chewing up his body and mind and spitting him out a broken old man.
While the first Banning movie riffed on Die Hard, this story borrows from The Fugitive.
The second act transforms the film into a remake of The Fugitive with Gerrard Butler instead of Harrison Ford.
And so the rest of the movie goes into “The Fugitive” mode, where Banning has to run away and figure it all out before turning himself in to the authorities.
Waugh’s film starts off well enough, but as things move along, “Angel Has Fallen” settles into a low-rent echo of 1993’s “The Fugitive,” as Banning has to simultaneously prove his innocence and take out the real bad guy, all while under hot pursuit from the FBI.
Olympus Has Fallen was a forgettable Gerard Butler action-movie vehicle best known for being the worse of two "Die Hard in the White House" movies released in 2013.
The threequel has ambitions to break the "Die Hard" formula of the first two films, only to trade it for an even more mundane formula.
It happened in Taken and Die Hard and I personally wasn't emotionally ready to deal with that for Gerard Butler.
While the first Banning movie riffed on Die Hard , this story borrows from The Fugitive .
In Olympus Has Fallen , a Die Hard clone that was inferior to White House Down in every respect except domestic box office performance, he saved the president from terrorists, and in the execrable London Has Fallen , he did it again.
Anyway, Angel Has Fallen strips away much of the Die Hard tropes from the first two installments, even as its politics and "Who are the baddies and why are they being bad?" plot comes straight out of Roland Emmerich's painfully underseen/underrated White House Down.
While not as operatic or elegant as John Woo’s output from that era, there are clear parallels and references to “Hard Boiled,” “Hard Target” and even his maligned “Mission: Impossible” sequel.
While not as operatic or elegant as John Woo’s output from that era, there are clear parallels and references to “Hard Boiled,” “Hard Target” and even his maligned “Mission: Impossible” sequel.
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Huston is more typecast as a bad guy than Freeman is as a president, and his sinister circumflex eyebrows echo his father John Huston as the ultimate baddie in Chinatown.
This is a movie that feels like it would desperately like to be part of a much simpler era, perhaps one of the Golan-Globus Reaganite warhorses of the ’80s — like the Chuck Norris vehicles The Delta Force or Invasion U.S.A.
Director Ric Roman Waugh conspicuously borrows from “The Fugitive” and last-stand movies like “Rio Bravo” and “Assault on Precinct Thirteen.”
Olympus Has Fallen is best remembered as the more successful of two dueling White House-themed action movies (the other was White House Down).
In fact, had you asked me which “White House In Peril” picture released in 2013 would still be telling its story today, I’d have bet big money on Roland Emmerich’s White House Down (if only because Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx seemed like better box office bets over Butler).
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.
In Olympus Has Fallen , a Die Hard clone that was inferior to White House Down in every respect except domestic box office performance, he saved the president from terrorists, and in the execrable London Has Fallen , he did it again.
Anyway, Angel Has Fallen strips away much of the Die Hard tropes from the first two installments, even as its politics and "Who are the baddies and why are they being bad?" plot comes straight out of Roland Emmerich's painfully underseen/underrated White House Down.
Olympus Has Fallen hit theaters March 2013, a few months before (the superior) White House Down.
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Waugh tops “Apocalypse Now” for the number and size of these explosions.
Seasoned action man Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) did the first one and this instalment is by Ric Roman Waugh, a former stuntman known for three low-budget prison films.