Angel Has Fallen
“Non-bros need not apply.”
Title: Angel Has Fallen (2019)
Director: Ric Roman Waugh 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Screenplay by Ric Roman Waugh 👨🏼🇺🇸, Robert Mark Kamen 👨🏼🇺🇸, and Matt Cook 👨🏼🇺🇸 based on the story by Creighton Rothenberger 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Katrin Benedikt 👩🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Clint 👨🏼🇺🇸🌈
Note: This review was commissioned by Lionsgate. The content and methodology remain 100% independent and in line with Mediaversity's non-commissioned reviews.
Technical: 2.5/5
Much like its two prior entries, Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and London Has Fallen (2016), Angel Has Fallen slots nicely into the kind of C-level action film white dads suck up like a six-pack of Miller High Life. While it softens some of the regressive geopolitics of its predecessors, Angel Has Fallen can’t bring much to the table to replace it.
This time, square-jawed Secret Serviceman Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) finds himself on the run, framed for the attempted assassination of the president, Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman). Left with few resources and nowhere to turn, Banning finds himself in the unlikely company of his survivalist father, Clay (Nick Nolte), who lives off the grid in West Virginia. From there, he must clear his name and find out who's responsible.
This is the sixth film from stuntman-turned director Ric Roman Waugh, who came up in the '90s doing stunts on work like The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Gone in 60 Seconds (2000). As such, the action choreography feels tactile and inventive within the constraints of the script, even as Waugh frustratingly obscures its spectacle with dimly-lit handheld photography.
The story's not much better, a limp airport thriller premise gussied up with some good old-fashioned cans of American whupass. Apart from the all-too-brief middle stretch where Banning reconnects with his kooky, claymore-laying dad, there's not a lot of personality or humor to the script or the performances.
Gender: 1/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? HELL no
Like a lot of macho action movies of its ilk, Angel Has Fallen is a film filled with guys being dudes. The few female characters who do exist have little to do. The highest-profile (and most proactive) woman in the cast is Jada Pinkett Smith as an FBI special agent who suspects Banning of the attack on the president, then spends a thin subplot chasing down other leads once he's on the run. Eventually, she's quietly and unceremoniously taken out by real villain Wade Jennings (Danny Huston), never to be mentioned again.
The only other woman in the picture is Banning's wife, Leah (Piper Perabo), who spends the vast majority of her runtime in the family home, cooking dinner and advising Banning on what to do. The only scene she has with another woman is a brief exchange with Pinkett Smith's character, which revolves entirely around her husband's innocence.
Later in the film, two henchmen come to capture Leah and her child at home; while she protests, she is hardly in a position to put up a fight, saved instead by Clay in a last-minute rescue. All of her dialogue relates to her husband, and she's hardly seen without a baby in her arms. The concerns or lives of women, whether in military or civilian life, are clearly not on Angel Has Fallen's list of priorities.
Race: 3/5
While Angel Has Fallen has a Black second lead in Morgan Freeman, don't let that confuse you into thinking he has much to do. Early in the film, Freeman's President Trumbull is hospitalized following a harrowing drone attack. From there, he spends the vast majority of the film in a hospital bed recovering from his injuries, until he's ushered through the chaotic final act. He's a MacGuffin, an obstacle to be protected more than a character with much agency of his own.
Granted, you can squint a bit and find some Trump-era subtext about the antipathy a white cabinet might feel towards serving a Black president. No one explicitly mentions race when it comes to their distrust for, and desire to unseat, Trumbull. But the optics of an all-white gang of military contractors and a greedy vice president (Tim Blake Nelson) are hard to ignore. (“We need to make this country strong again,” Nelson says while wearing a long red tie.)
The two other major actors of color are Pinkett Smith and Lance Reddick as the head of the Secret Service, both of whom serve similar roles as law enforcement professionals who misguidedly keep Banning from protecting the President because they suspect he's responsible. We've already discussed how Pinkett Smith’s character is quickly fridged and forgotten about; Reddick’s, for his part, follows Banning and plays an active hand in protecting Trumbull in the climax, though he doesn’t stand out on his own.
Generally, casting Black actors as the second and third leads in a film primarily marketed to white men offers acceptable representation, but closer inspection reveals how little agency these characters get. Banning's superiors may all be Black and competent, but they're quickly pushed out of the way so the white lead can shine.
Mediaversity Grade: D 2.17/5
While it eases up on the open xenophobia of the series' previous adventures—in the second film, Banning gleefully kills a Muslim terrorist while taunting him to "go back to Fuckheadistan"—Angel Has Fallen is still a white guy power fantasy through and through. As such, there’s little room for women and people of color to assert themselves. There are several Black leads in positions of power in major roles, but they're largely sidelined, to say nothing of the women who either sit at home worrying about their husbands or are framed in opposition to our lead character. It's pure old-school action schlock; non-bros need not apply.
Like Angel Has Fallen? Try these other titles starring stoic killing machines.
The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (2021)
Shadow in the Cloud (2020)
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)