Has Fallen series

  • Angel Has Fallen (2019)

    Angel Has Fallen (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) I’ve been saying since London has Fallen that the wrong White-House-in-Peril movie got a sequel (White House Down should have been the one to get follow-ups), and now we’re adding insult to injury with an even less remarkable third film in the series. Sure, you could warm up to Olympus has Fallen and even London has Fallen because whatever their faults were, at least they aimed big: White House under attack by terrorists? G7 meeting attacked by terrorists? There’s some fun there. But in this instalment, the plot hook is just… our hero being framed by mercenaries. Oh. The much smaller scale of the action fails to impress, and it’s not as there is that much character to develop in between the action sequences – writer-director Ric Roman Waugh is content simply getting something bankable to the screen. Sure, Angel Has Fallen is watchable. Whether it will hold your interest in between other things, though, is highly debatable. At least it’s honest about what it’s trying to do: Gerard Butler is making a career out of mediocre films that know perfectly well what they’re all about, and it’s not with this third film in the series that he’s striking off in unexpected directions. At least the supporting cast also understands what kind of movie they’re playing with: John Huston makes a great heavy as usual, and Morgan Freeman plays a president like no one else can — oh, and Nick Nolte brings a welcome bit of craziness in a far too staid film. But none of this really elevates Angel Has Fallen over disappointing mediocrity. Go ahead and go rewatch White House Down instead.

  • London has Fallen (2016)

    London has Fallen (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, June 2016) Nobody asked for this sequel (Upon learning that it was coming, I thought, “they made a sequel to the wrong white-house-in-peril movie!”) but now that London has Fallen exists, what can we learn from the experience? Perhaps, surprisingly, that it actually improves upon the admittedly dismal first film in the series: Without Antoine Fuqua at the helm, London Has Fallen tones down the excessive violence, swearing and mean-spiritedness. The result still isn’t particularly inspiring (this is, after all, a film where—ethnic slurs aside—Americans are criticized for indiscriminate drone-bombing, to which they triumphantly respond with even more drone-bombing) but it’s potent in the way generic action thrillers can be enjoyable as long as you don’t ask too many questions about American hegemony. There isn’t a whole lot of plot to London has Fallen—just Gerard Butler killing terrorists with jingoistic bon mots, Aaron Eckhart looking presidential and stock footage of London with tons of smoke. The film occasionally shows signs of life—most notably during a G7 assassination festival earlier on, and a mock single-take assault on a building later on. Most of the time, though, it seems happy to go through the motions of an eighties action film with implausibly well-organized foes, a bulletproof hero and plenty of unanswered questions. As dumb and borderline unpalatable as it may be, though, London Has Fallen does manage to stay on this side of the unacceptability line, which is more than the first film did. I’m not at all convinced that a third entry in the series is needed, but at least it ends on a higher note than if the first film had been allowed to disappear without a follow-up.