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Paris Has Fallen is separate from the Gerard Butler movies, where we had 2 good films in the series – Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen, as well as a poor finale in Angel Has Fallen, so this is more of the same, but in France, as the title would rather indicate.
It doesn’t take too long as a security guard is gunned down by a baddie posing as a waiter, but as I’ve learned with the Hitman games, subtlety is a virtue, so don’t be like this one as she crashes her cart-of-stuff through a door to get to the guard, which would attract unnecessary attention… even more so when she doesn’t check that the door she’s just come through is still open!
But I guess originality is in short supply, these days, so it’s a bad time to reference that this is one of those productions where innocent people get blown away by baddies, even when they’re posing zero threat. How are they going to explain that to their families? Bah, lazy writing.
And when baddie Jacob Pearce (Sean Harris – Mission Impossible: Fallout) introduces himself with “I have no intention to hurt you”, erm… I don’t believe you… and that’s just before he demands a huge stack of cash from the French Prime Minister, as Jacob was once Captain in the Foreign Legion, went to Afghanistan, was meant to kill a Taliban commander, but they inadvertently walked into an ambush and he blames the powers that be. So, he’s a bit miffed.
In the role of ‘Gerard Butler’ is a double-header of former Doctors/Humans actress Ritu Arya as MI6’s Zara Taylor, alongside the PM’s bodyguard, Vincent (Tewfik Jallab), with Zara’s early actions involving introducing one baddie to the heel of a stilleto shoe!
So far, I’ve seen the first two episodes, and this is passable, but I’m not sure I’ll stick the distance over all 8 of them.. It’s not like it’s going to have complex plotting, so surely a film was all that was required?
Thanks to our friends at Prime Video for the screener prior to release.
Paris Has Fallen is on Prime Video from Friday November 1st, but the series isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 45 minutes (8 episodes)
Release date: November 1st 2024
Studio: Prime Video
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Series Directors: Hans Herbots, Oded Ruskin
Producer: Johnny Capps
Writer/Creator: Howard Overman
Music: Ian Arber, Dave Rowntree
Cast:
Vincent: Tewfik Jallab
Zara Taylor: Ritu Arya
Jacob Pearce: Sean Harris
Pascal: Laurent Lucas
Juliette: Emmanuelle Bercot
Freja: Ana Ularu
Lucas: Paul Gorostidi
Matis: Jérémie Covillault
Thea: Camille Rutherford
Simone: Nagisa Morimoto
Celine: Clémentine Baert
Rowan: Karl Collins
Richard: John Hopkins
Ruben: Omar Mebrouk
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.