WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Angel Has Fallen, in theaters now.
Angel Has Fallen continues Mike Banning's (Gerard Butler) job as the most elite Secret Service Agent in the White House, this time working to protect Morgan Freeman's president, Alan Trumbull. Sadly, once Mike gets framed for an attempted assassination on Trumbull, he dives deeper into the terrorist attack only to discover there are internal threats in their own cabinet.
As this journey gets grimier and grimier, director Ric Roman Waugh and his creative team go a little meta with the audience by taking major swipes at American politics along the way.
MAKE AMERICA STRONG AGAIN
The final act of the movie reveals the true culprit is actually vice president Kirby (Time Blake Nelson), who wanted Trumbull dead so he could be sworn in and go to war with Russia. Kirby used Mike's best friend and war contractor, Wade (Danny Huston), to frame Mike and also fake a link with the Russians, making it look like they hired Mike as an inside man to kill the president.
Kirby went through all this trouble because he felt America eased off the gas as a world power and needed to reassert dominance. Trumbull axed private contractors as he wanted to spread a philosophy of peace, but as Kirby tells Wade in a secret phone call, that was a sign of weakness. Their plan is to "make America strong again," which Kirby takes pride in, calling them true patriots.
It's a play on U.S. President Donald Trump, whose "Make America Great Again" slogan actually became a key campaign driver in his electoral success. It's also sadly been appropriated by select groups in America for what many deem hate speech and discrimination against ethnic minorities, different sexualities and genders. It's been used by supremacists at times against the concept of "the other," and who oppose inclusivity and diversity as they think "outsiders" are making the country weak or destabilizing it in terms of the economy, jobs, etc..
THE ELECTIONS TAMPERING
When Kirby starts to dissect why Trumbull came into power, it's clear he holds a bitterness towards him. This jealousy aside, Kirby admits there was some Russian tampering with the elections, mentioning social media being used to influence voters.
He hints this got Trumbull elected as Russia knew he'd cut contractors to make his country seem kinder in the public's eye, and with this weakening of America's defenses, Russia could overtake them. Kirby wants to reignite the feud, though, to bring the former Soviet Union to its knees once and for all.
By harping on about Russians interfering with the elections, it's pretty clear the movie's riffing on the digital interference of fake stories online, Russian bots allegedly interacting with real users on social media and everything from online quizzes to websites being used for data mining in the last American elections.
The final sequence of the film confirms this cheeky jab by having Trumbull alongside world leaders at a United Nations conference, right next to the likeness of Vladimir Putin. They're buddying up, making peace after Mike averts war between them, which also comes off as a shot at Trump pandering to Putin and trying to maintain an uneasy diplomacy.
It's never confirmed Russia did help Trumbull, but the intent and real-world message is clear as he seems to be letting this version of Putin dictate the pace of their relations.
Now in theaters, Angel Has Fallen stars Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Jada Pinkett Smith, Lance Reddick, Tim Blake Nelson and Piper Perabo, with Nick Nolte and Danny Huston.