So we saw Angel Has Fallen (2019) on Netflix last night. It's the third in the "Fallen" series - Olympus Has Fallen (2013), London Has Fallen (2016) - a nonstop adrenalin saga of Agent Mike Banning overcoming traitors and what seems like hundreds of armed commandos against him to save the U. S. President, now Allan Trumbull, played by Morgan Freeman, who has moved up from Speaker of the House, to Vice President, to now President in the trilogy. I enjoyed the first two movies a lot, but didn't review them, for who knows why.
What I liked most about Angel Has Fallen is Nick Nolte, who puts in an appearance as Clay Banning, Mike's father, a hermit with munitions savvy whom Mike aptly characterizes as one step away from the Unabomber. But Clay plays a crucial strategic role in this story, and I'm maybe only slightly exaggerating when I say this may be Nolte's best performance and part since Rich Man, Poor Man in 1976, though I truthfully can't think of another movie or television series in which Nolte was so surprisingly effective.
Also notable in this movie is Danny Huston, who has been one my favorite villains since his Ben Diamond in the all-too brief Magic City TV series (2012-2013). He projects a combination of intelligence, moral structure that allows him to do great evil, with an underlying adherence nonetheless to some kind of code with some trace of, if not integrity at least its style, that makes him the ideal ultimate antagonist for Mike Banning.
Freeman as Trumbull of course makes an angel to devil comparison of what's now in the White House in our off-screen reality, but there was an eerie suggestion of Trump nonetheless in Trumbull's Vice President, played by Tim Blake Nelson, who reminded me of current U. S. Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Check out the photos below if you think I'm crazy:
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| Steven Mnuchin |
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