Reel Entropy

Keeping most of Angel has Fallen in the eastern backwoods both gives it a nice grimy tinge and mildly suppresses production costs. Images courtesy Lionsgate.

3/10 I really don’t want to think about Gerard Butler as a weirdo-James Woods type who makes movies to deliberately overcorrect for “liberal Hollywood” because he’s so talented, but it’s getting kind of ridiculous. The guy’s from Glasgow, but he’s spent the past decade self-producing these hyper-patriotic Die Hard knockoffs where he personally defends the president that all feel designed more for to deliver a political message and let Butler play out his ‘80s action hero fantasies than to entertain.

They’ve all got moments where a high-ranking official recites something mundane like the pledge of allegiance or the oath of office as a defiant statement against foreign forces, and his character is always thinking about retiring but learns that protecting the political hierarchy is the most important thing in the world, and there’s always more. They’re all full of awkward moments as they go out of their way to incorporate political ideology. Olympus has Fallen is basically all about gun control, and London has Fallen is much less gracefully about nationalism and paranoia, to the point that it drew attention for being kind of racist.

Continue reading →