Movie Review: ‘Olympus Has Fallen’

It’s got more head shots than a Hollywood casting agency and enough corn to fill up your seven dollar bucket, but “Olympus Has Fallen”, already being described as “Die Hard In The White House. That’s not necessarily a negative thing; the blood spatter and lone-wolf  hero  antics could have come right out of the Nakatomi Towers.

Gerard Butler, in the Bruce Willis role, plays a Secret Service agent in charge of the Presidential detail. He’s a tip-top dude, sharp and dedicated—but a tragedy that happens in the first act of the film sidelines him to a job many rungs lower on the ladder.

Enter the villains, a flock of Koreans with a four engine plane that flies right into the white house south lawn (after a gratuitous clipping of the Washington Monument—it tumbles in a way that is too reminiscent of the World Trade Center to be included in a junky commercial action film—poor taste award to director Antoine Fuqua).

Hundreds and hundreds of shots are fired as the Korean team makes its way into the White House, where the President (Aaron Eckhart does a good job with the role) is taken hostage. But the most important question is where is the President’s young son? He’s somewhere in the building, but who will find him first? The bad guys or Gerard Butler, who has seen what’s happening on TV and rushed to the scene to save the day.

Let’s not belabor the obvious from this point: things happen as they’re supposed to. There’s some tension, sure. And a few unintended laughs, not to mention some over-cooked jingoism, slo-motion flag flying. Koreans are the new Russians, Chinese, Indians, Nazis and all the other previous nationalities made into movie bad guys. This one’s slightly more nuanced, by which I mean confusing—is he South Korean? North Korean? Can you repeat that part again?

Gerard Butler had enough punches on his “Frequent Bad Movie” card that he was treading on thin ice—happily, this role goes into the positive column; he’s credible, he kicks ass and he’s a bad, bad dude.

The violence is graphic, the conclusion obvious—to a lot of movie goers, that’s a ringing endorsement. For me, it was a well executed 80’s action film augmented by the wonders of today’s digital effects artists.

I’d give it 2 ½ stars—or a “C+” .

Kyle Osborne and Gerard Butler