Good action flicks are in short supply these days; iconic action flicks are barely existent in this era; and legendary action flicks are about as common as a butch unicorn with a zebra harem. While we don’t get memorable action films like Predator, Rambo II or Braddock: Missing in Action anymore, sometimes we get real gems like the John Wick trilogy, and other times we get films like Gerard Butler’s Angel Has Fallen.
This is the third entry in the trilogy of Has Fallen flicks that started with the surprise sleeper hit of Olympus Has Fallen way back in 2013, which was essentially Die Hard in the White House. The follow-up, London Has Fallen, was the 2016 outing that saw Gerard Butler and his man-pal Aaron Eckhart taking on terrorists during a London siege (which at this point may as well be prophetic given the way things are going in the U.K.).
The third flick sees Gerard Butler stepping back into the role as Mike Banning, only this time the President is now Morgan Freeman, which basically sees his career coming full circle after he starred as the President in Deep Impact way back in 1998. You can check out the trailer below courtesy of FilmStop Trailers.
The film takes a pretty interesting turn compared to what I was expecting. Not that it’s mind blowing or anything, just slightly better than what I was expecting.
Mike Banning is framed for an attempted assassination attempt on the President of the United States after a fishing trip is waylaid by a drone swarm that look like miniature stealth bombers. It’s a pretty cool looking sequence where everybody but Banning is aced.
Surviving the drone swarm renders Banning and the President incapacitated, however, and when Banning finally comes to he’s chained up and being framed for the attempted assassination, which leads to him having to bust free and bust some heads along the way.
Nothing in the trailer looks like it comes close to the CQC fight sequences from the first film, but it looks like they ramped up some of the long-range shootouts and action-driving sequences compared to the original. I don’t know if they’ll be able to top that pretty cool chase sequence in the second film throughout the streets of London, though.
Also, compared to the trailer for the first Olympus Has Fallen this trailer seems a little less enthused and Butler looks a lot more out of shape. Compare his performance in Angel Has Fallen to his more svelte form in the trailer for the 2013 outing.
I doubt this latest film is going to go down in the history books as anything more than a schlocky two-hour bit of entertainment for a lazy weekend, but sometimes that’s just enough to take us out of the Clown World antics that have seemingly overtaken every other aspect of our lives.
You can look for Angel Has Fallen to hit theaters this August.
