On Amazon Prime Video, the action thriller “Angel Has Fallen” is available as of today without additional costs in the subscription. Yet in 2013, when the first part “Olympus Has Fallen” came into theaters, no one believed in such a lasting success of the series!
It’s not yet 100 percent clear why it happens, but the phenomenon definitely exists: time and again, several projects with very similar themes are developed in parallel by competing studios in Hollywood, which then fight for the audience’s favor at the box office with only a short time gap. The best-known examples include the asteroid blockbusters “Armageddon” & “Deep Impact”, the almost plot-similar comedies “Friendship Plus” & “Friends with Certain Preferences” or the Snow White variations “Mirror Mirror” & “Snow White And The Huntsman”…
An especially blatant example of such cinematic doppelgangers occurred in the summer of 2013, when two films competed against each other at once, in which the White House in Washington is stormed by terrorists, whereupon the president and his bodyguard have to defend themselves together against the intruders. However, the underdog clearly prevailed in this duel. Instead of the much more expensive Roland Emmerich blockbuster “White House Down” with Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum, the cheaper and dirtier “Olympus Has Fallen” with Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart clearly came out on top in the end.
A CLEAR VICTORY FOR THE OUTSIDER
So while “White House Down” disappointed at the box office, the clear underdog “Olympus Has Fallen,” on which really hardly any box office bettors at the time would have put even a penny, emerged as a long-lived action franchise …
This is what “Angel Has Fallen” is about: After an assassination attempt on U.S. President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), his chief bodyguard Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) comes under suspicion of being behind the devastating attack. While the president is in a coma, Banning, who is now being hunted by all the authorities, has to fight his way across the USA to find the real scapegoat. In the process, he also relies on the help of his long-lost father, embodied by Nick Nolte with a completely bonkers performance as a kind of hearty Una-Bomber…
Does “Angel Has Fallen” pay off: “Angel Has Fallen” by Carsten Baumgardt describes the film as a mixture of the action thriller masterpieces “Die Hard” and “On the Run” – but in the end only 2.5 out of 5 possible stars jump out for the film.
