 "What happened to Gerard Butler?")
Seriously, what happened to this once-famous Scottish movie star who took the world by storm with 300, the ‘Fallen’ franchise and so much more. And yes, he took more than a passing interest in our own Priyanka Chopra once.
In the last film, in the Fallen series, Angel Has Fallen in 2019 Morgan Freeman played the President of the United States. Freeman is as black as Obama and replaces the White President from the first two films of the ‘Fallen’ franchise. Gerard Butler played Mike Banning, the US Prez’s security chief who has been out of luck since his fleeting fling with Priyanka Chopra a decade ago.
Butler was impressively tormented in Angel Has Fallen, tight-jawed and furious in a role that was meant to shine his frayed valour on a violent landscape where guns and brave men roam helter-skelter hoping the camera captures their derring-do in proportionate measures. The director had an eye for streamlined stunt sequences. The action sequences, especially the one where the President is ambushed in the ocean by drones, are first-rate.
I have to admit that the action sequences in Mr Butler’s new film Last Seen Alive now on Netflix, are not half as riveting as they were in Angel Has Fallen. Tonally, though, this film is terrifically tense. Butler plays Will a man trying hard to argue with his pretty wife (Jaimie Alexander, from the Thor series) against divorce. She seems adamant. Before they can resolve the issue, they reach a petrol station for a refill. She gets off the car to go to the restroom, and never returns.
Games
View AllThe portions of the narration after the wife’s disappearance are the most gripping. The husband Will’s frantic attempts to locate her, inquiring with growing anxiety of every passerby at the gas station, records the panic situation with calm intensity.
Butler as the anxious husband hits the right notes, especially when faced with the apathy of the cops, who as expected, treat him as the primary suspect in his wife’s kidnapping. Regrettably, the rest of the proceedings are trite rather than taut. Sundry scumbags are introduced into the storytelling. There is some vague reference to drug dealers and the narration becomes progressively encumbered by a scarcity of budget and imagination, not necessarily in that order. By the time the mystery of the disappearing wife is solved, we really can’t care less about her well-being.
Last Seen Alive probably meant to be as gripping a thriller as Butler’s ‘Fallen’ series. But it is constant bogged down by awful choices in the writing. Should the husband be shown dramatically overwrought? Hell, no! Gerard Butler is the kind of allusive actor who can convey a wealth of grief and fury by just standing still on screen.
But stillness is death in a film that counts only on a simulated momentum and diversionary noise to keep the audience involved. We never entirely lose interest in the proceedings. But we never quite get close enough to Butler’s character to heel his helpless rage.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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