I noticed about this movie few weeks ago when I was looking at the list of upcoming films in Indonesia. It was another sequel to the action movies I quite enjoyed then. But it did not seem to be garnering a lot of hype here, probably because the trailer was never shown at all and it only played in 1 cinema chain, albeit the largest one. Anyway, my wife and I went to see this in our favorite Dolby Atmos theater. OK I am going to go ahead with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler - The Vanishing, Hunter Killer etc) was now given the assignment of protecting president Trumbull (Morgan Freeman - The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, The Shawsank Redemption etc). His life seemed to be in best shape as he was in contention to be promoted and had a real good life with his wife Leah (Piper Perabo - Coyote Ugly, Covert Affairs TV series etc) and baby daughter plus enjoying his friendship with his old army buddy Wade Jennings (Danny Huston - Wonder Woman, The Aviator etc).
However, things started to get really bad for Mike when an assassination attempt was made on the president and he became the scapegoat. Hunted by the FBI led by special agent Thompson (Jada Pinket Smith - Bad Moms, Gotham TV series etc) and suspected by his own director David Gentry (Lance Reddick - John Wick series etc) & the Vice President Kirby (Tim Blake Nelson - Lincoln, Colossal etc), Mike had to find ways to prove his innocence, including enlisting the unlikely help from the person he did not want to have anything to do (Nick Nolte - 48 Hours, The Prince of Tides etc).
So how would the story conclude? Find them all in this quite full of action movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Just like in the previous movie, the first 15-20 minutes was focusing on Mike Banning's life which might felt a bit slow to some audience. But once the action started, it was quite nonstop intensity and action from then onwards. Some of the actions were quite well done with lots of explosions involved and as usual, Mike Banning would come to the rescue even at the most unlikely time. However, I could not help feeling that the overall action was not as spectacular & violent or over the top compared to Olympus Has Fallen or London Has Fallen. Those two had very cool scene of top landmarks being blown away which to me was totally awesome, while in here even though there were explosions, but they were a bit pale in comparison to those movies.
One thing that I quite enjoyed in here was the appearance of Nick Nolte (who still looked familiar despite having white beard on his face that made him look like Santa Claus). He actually enlightened the mood a bit with his half crazy behavior and style. I also thought that our main lead Gerard Butler still got it. He was still able to do some great stunts in the action scenes. There was also a new face Piper Perabo who replaced Radha Mitchell as Mike's wife. She did not leave too much impression as she seemed more like the support role. The rest of them were OK, with Morgan Freeman in particular providing his usual calm presence as the president.
The movie maker also tried to provide some twists in here which were quite easy to guess by me and my wife and likely the rest of the audience, especially if we have seen a lot of movies similar to this one. I also like the sound effects of this film, even though it was having the standard Dolby Surround 7.1 and not Dolby Atmos (it is indeed very sad that we are unable to find out if the movie is having Atmos sound effect, since the cinema website has been modified but lacking that kind of specific info). Btw, the film also had quite long duration of 121 minutes which included the closing credit. There was a brief mid end credit scene which was quite amusing.
As this was a third movie of the Mike Banning series, it might be considered as the final of a trilogy (should they want to stop now). But the way the movie ended, it did not seem to have a conclusion feeling, and they certainly could make a further sequels if they see this movie is successful enough. However, if this is the last one, I would feel a little bit dissatisfaction, simply because as I said earlier, the action sequence was not too spectacular enough.
Overall this was still a good action movie. It was still enjoyable as it got some nice actions and good special effects with quite a lot explosions and some violence plus crude language (which made it classified for 17+). So if you are looking for this kind of quality and want to enjoy action film without a heavy plot, surely this could satisfy you. It is certainly better than B quality movie but it has not reached the highest level yet. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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