Angel has Fallen

Going in: When I saw the trailer, I saw Nick Nolte and thought huh, this'll be interesting. But this is still a Gerard Butler movie. So not a lot of thought, just a mindless action movie.

Popcorn: 7/10. Pretty much got what I expected. The only true disappointment was not seeing more of Nick Nolte and Gerard Butler together. It's not a bad movie, but not a great one either. However, I will say that the last scene

Art: 7.5/10. This is an action film so its goal isn't mind-blowing art. It's designed to entertain and I feel it does mostly that but in a mediocre way. Good acting but also a pretty bland story and some cinematography issues.

Acting: 5/6. The acting is pretty good. Say what you will about Gerard Butler, he can act. People knock his accent but mostly you just go with it. There were times when I saw Jadet Pinket Smith and, not recognizing her (I haven't seen too many movies with her in it) realized she knew what she was doing. Nick Nolte was amazing. And Morgan Freeman does a good job of being President. While the acting was really good, I wouldn't say it was amazing - except Nick Nolte. Watch the movie and you'll understand.

Music: 2/4. I have to say the music didn't even register which in retrospect is kind of disappointing.

Filming: 3/4. Okay, lots to say here. There were a lot of close-ups, probably 85mm? Nothing bad, I just noticed it a lot. Most of the work was done in the house was with a handheld but without much support. If that had been done later in the film, it would have made more sense. But the work done with wide-angle lenses was pretty nice. There were some shots catching sunlight just right that was pretty good. The last thing to say was the night-time shooting. The graininess of the film was severely noticeable. I'm not sure there's much you can do about it, especially with nighttime shooting, but it was noticeable.

Art Dept: 4/4. It's set in modern times so there's nothing eye-popping here which is a good thing. Otherwise, it'd be distracting. The set design was pretty well done I think. Especially in the cabin.

Editing: 2/4. Sometimes this was distracting. It's typical for action movies to have a lot of cut shots, but at some points, I felt it was a little ridiculous.

Story: 6/8. Okay, here's where I feel things start to fall apart in these movies. In some instances, the characters were believable and were believable in tough situations. But in others, the obvious answer was not obvious to them and it should have been. Towards the end, aside from some battering and bruising, there's no huge sacrifice, nothing lost. The story was pretty free of coincidence and didn't have any moments where I rolled my eyes. I didn't notice the pacing which is pretty rare. On the other hand, the film didn't hang on the theme of quitting. Kind of a dialog/action mismatch.

Directing: 5/6. Overall I liked the movie. It was fun but it wasn't really earth shatteringly good.

Production: 3/4. The movie was promising and I felt it was the right team. The only thing that I didn't like was that the trailer seemed to promise a father/son relationship movie but that wasn't part of it - which was too bad because those were some of the most enjoyable parts.