Secret Service Agent Mike Banning is back again in ‘Angel Has Fallen’

Posted on August 30, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

Back in 2013, as often happens with Hollywood, we got two different films with the same premise: assaults on the White House. The first was “Olympus Has Fallen,” and the second was “White House Down.” I saw the second one, but never got around to seeing the other. When “London Has Fallen” arrived in 2016, I still hadn’t seen “Olympus,” so I ended up skipping the sequel as well.

Now we have “Angel Has Fallen,” the third and presumably final installment in the franchise, although if the movie makes enough money, I’m sure there will be a fourth. Not wanting to miss out again, I took the time to watch the first two movies and enjoyed both quite a lot, in a summer popcorn flick, turn-your-brain-off kind of way.

In “Angel Has Fallen,” hero Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is back, now serving President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), who was speaker of the house in the first movie and vice-president in the second. Because we wouldn’t have a movie otherwise, there is once again an assassination attempt on the president. Only this time, all of the evidence points at Mike, who is being framed to take the fall as part of a much larger conspiracy.

On the lamb and with nobody to trust, Mike will have to use all of his training, his cunning and whatever luck he might have left to not only find the true perpetrators but stop them before they finish the job and kill the president.

Although there are all of the shoot outs and explosions we’ve come to expect from this franchise, “Angel Has Fallen” delivers a much more personal story as Mike finds himself on his own and being hunted by those who believe he was behind the original attack. We get to meet his estranged father (Nick Nolte, “Warrior”), as well as see the physical toll his previous adventures have taken on him.

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