Olympus Has Fallen

Well, I am finally back.  After having to take a bit of a break to allow my body the chance to work out the kinks of a prescription, I am ready to do the daily movie reviews.  I had attempted to keep it up when I started the prescription, but the side effects became rather unfortunate and life was reduced to simple things like sleeping (actually, it involved a heck of a lot of not sleeping – one of the fun side effects), yelling at cats, and watching movies.  Lucky for you, I have seen a few movies as of late that have left me with stuff to talk about.  Unlucky for you, most of those films were lacking any kind of depth and included a lot of films that focused on explosions and/or giant sharks.

Today’s movie is a film that I saw in theatre earlier this year when it first came out, and I managed to talk Rachel into viewing it when it popped up on Netflix.  The movie is Olympus Has Fallen, a film about terrorists who take over the White House and the one man who can stop them.  When attempting to convince Rachel that she should watch this movie with me I left out the fact that it was basically considered by everyone to be Die Hard but in the White House (Rachel fell asleep during Die Hard, so I made sure to never bring it up).

Tragically, not only is this film like Die Hard in its most base concept, but there are styles and moments taken right out of the beloved action film from the 80s.  One could see this film and interpret the thievery as laziness, and it would be hard to argue with that fact as laziness was what I was left thinking about in regards to a number of a of this movie.  For one thing, the CGI effects in this movie are lazy to the point of being on par with an Asylum production.  From planes to cars, the visual effects cook awful and like something out of a made for TV movie.  Also in the realm of laziness was the unfolding of the assault on the White House.  Apparently an unidentified military plane can fly into American airspace and get to within a stone’s throw of the nation’s capital before a mere two planes are scrambled to ‘intercept’ it.  After those measly planes got shot down, it seems it would take another five minutes to finish the job.

One thing that had me worried going into this film was gratuitous amounts of flag waving, since it is a movie about taking back the White House against evil foreigners (Koreans, to be exact).  Not being an American, movies with an overabundance of patriotism can cause some near fatal eye rolling and I was sure this film would be wandering into that territory.  While it did have its moments of flag waving patriotism, it was not too hard to digest and was kept to a minimum.  The hardest pill to swallow was the fact that they called the White House ‘Olympus,’ essentially referring it to the mythical place where the gods lived and ruled over the earth.  That seemed more than a tad ethnocentric, but if you can get past that you can get to meet…

Mike Banning… Secret Service badass with emotional baggage and a need to prove to himself that he can protect the president.  Really, that’s all you need to know about him, but I will tell you more.  Mike Banning does not doddle.  Mike Banning takes no prisoners.  Mike Banning believes in asking questions first, shooting second, and then shooting third.  Gerard Butler plays the role of Banning (a great name for a one man wrecking ball, if ever there was one) and is where the real heart of this movie is.  The dialogue is cheesy and uninspired, but Butler makes this film fun and it is easy to let all of the previous laziness fall to the side and just join in on the fun of a very angry Banning ripping his way through baddies on route to saving the world.

What would otherwise be a laughable movie actually ends up turning into a great revisit to the feel of the eighties action movie, you just have to make it through what I thought was a slog for the first thirty minutes.  If you can endure the predictable beginning and awful special effects during the siege on the White House, you just may end up having a blast with this action flick.  Because so much of the production of the movie felt lazy (I should mention that once the movie started taking place within the White House, it tightened up significantly), the burden lands on the shoulders of the great cast to give it some life and they do just that.  It is full of acting veterans such as Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, Melissa Leo, Ashley Judd, Robert Forster, and Morgan Freeman.  It is a heck of a deep cast, and they all slide right into their roles and are what really makes this movie work.

In a year that has seen some monumental flops from former action stars of the 80s attempting to recreate their charm, it is an 80s action movie knock-off that is able to hit the mark.  While there are so many aspects of Olympus Has Fallen that we can criticize and find fault in, it is the cast and the action scenes that happen from within the White House that allow the viewer to find enjoyment with a mindless action movie.  Where some films have convoluted plots to try and seem smart, this film has a convoluted plot that simply exists to be a vehicle for gun fights, fist fights, knife fights, cheesy lines from the hero, and attack helicopters.  That’s exactly the kind of plot that Mike Banning likes.

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars