Angel Has Fallen

As with many of [Butler's] recent projects, it's been compiled with minimal quality control, insistently cancelling out its better ideas with turns for the derivative.

As staged by director Ric Roman Waugh, the film's hand-to-hand combat is so routine it's deadening - and, for that matter, so is its assault-rifle-to-assault-rifle combat.

A big, lumbering bastard of an action movie sequel. It achieves more-or-less exactly what it promises - which, given this franchise's track record, is a low bar to clear.

[Nick Nolte] can still summon up the enthusiasm to pump some much needed pep into the dialogue. Butler, who's also looking very tired, perks up considerably once they begin to banter.

Maudlin, glum and distinctly cheap-looking, Angel brings the curtain down on a trilogy that should have never got this far.

This is mostly just a tired, lazy, unambitious and only ever unintentionally funny plod through the cliches.

"The Fugitive," to which "Angel" owes perhaps even its rooftop finale, is a template against which this movie inevitably falls short.

It's frenetic, brashly executed and so full of shooting, you'll stagger away with tinnitus.