'Angel Has Fallen' review: Gerard Butler is back in action

The " Has Fallen" series — "Olympus," "London" and now " Angel Has Fallen" — is a curiously enduring franchise. But it seems the character of Mike Banning, a foul-mouthed Secret Service agent played with a lumpy gruffness by Gerard Butler, has filled the void of the everyman action hero, displaced by those with superpowers and elegant martial arts skills.
This time, it’s our hero who has fallen, the "guardian angel" to President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman, the only returning c-ostar). After a drone attack on the president during a fishing trip, Banning wakes up cuffed to a hospital bed, framed to take the fall for the hit. Indicted and imprisoned, then kidnapped by the mercenaries who tried to kill the president, Banning has no choice but to go rogue.
"Angel" is more somber than the wisecracking "Olympus" or the frothing, jingoistic "London." The weight makes the film strangely dull at times. (How can a scene of Butler crashing a big rig into a tree be so flat?) But some moments hit a real nerve, such as a shootout in an office building where young bearded white men in tactical gear pump thousands of rounds into drywall and office furniture.
Director Ric Roman Waugh brings a chaotic, vertiginous style to " Angel," potentially the best-looking of all the films. What’s truly daring, however, is that Waugh, with co-writers Robert Mark Kamen and Matt Cook, actually address all the brain injuries Mike must have suffered in the gleefully unhinged splatterfests of the first two films. He’s been scamming doctors for pain pills and even admits he’s got a lot to address, personally.
At the heart of the " Has Fallen" franchise is the affection between men, and Butler has always shared the best chemistry with his male co-stars. That spark in " Angel" comes from Butler’s scenes with Nick Nolte, as his father, Clay, a veteran living off the grid. It’s Clay’s older, wiser perspective that pushes Banning to take stock of his life. And surprisingly, the tough guy is willing to grow and change, along with the franchise itself, even if it is as goofy and violent as it always has been.