Olympus has Fallen

Antoine Fuqua tries his hand at a new genre, battling Roland Emmerich's White House Down in a Deep Impact/Armageddon rivalry. Olympus has Fallen is more Deep Impact than Armageddon, and not just because Morgan Freeman plays the President. A hybrid Die Hard/Air Force One, the only thing missing is Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford. Instead, we get Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler. In his defense, Butler does action very well, but I get tired of him trying to hide his Scottish accent in a painfully artificial "Hey, I'm an American Secret Service guy" way.

The film begins as predictable as you can get. Eckhart is the President, running for re-election, and Butler is his protector and best friend (and boxing sparring buddy, and role model of his son, and secret crush of his wife...yuck). Through a series of events, the wife dies and Butler's Mike Banning is blamed, relegating him to a desk job because the sight of him is just too painful for the President to handle. They never get back to this plot point in the future of the film, which is a bit odd because it's a pretty critical piece of the story. Oh well.

A Korean terrorist (why is this the big hot enemy right now?) then stages what can only be described as an absolute bloodbath of an action scene in which the White House is decimated and taken over, sending the President and his entire staff into a bunker where they are forced to activate nukes.

The Secret Service, capitol police, and even military have no response for this, being just one of the unbelievable pieces of the film. Banning finds himself alone in the White House, killing bad guys and trying to save the President. Just like John McClaine, he has to kill baddies in fun and interesting ways, and he has to deliver a witty, but painfully cliche line each time he does.

In a sub plot, Banning's wife is a nurse, and frankly doesn't really have a place in this movie. It was a terrible relationship with no chemistry and didn't go far enough to be worth keeping. Should have been cut (sorry Radha Mitchell).

The action is absolutely absurd. Fuqua makes Michael Bay look like an amateur (ok, not really) as he blows up everything he can. I can just imagine him at the budget meeting salivating over how much stuff he can explode.

The cast is stacked with veterans, and I was personally happy to see a bigger, badder Cole Hauser reunited with Fuqua (Tears of the Sun) after falling off the face of the earth for a few years. He's got a couple of projects lined up, so expect to see more of him, possibly a real comeback. Oscar winner Melissa Leo is awful (and unrecognizable) as the Secretary of Defense, given such patriotic lines that it adds some levity to the torture, action, and violence. Sad really. Angela Bassett, Morgan Freeman, Dylan McDermott, Robert Forster, and a very brief appearance by Ashley Judd round out the cast that is clearly in it for the paycheck.

Enough skewering. For all of its flaws, the film was respectable. I appreciate Fuqua pushing the envelope on this one. I didn't enjoy it, but I appreciated it. This is a hybrid disaster/cautionary tale story. Exploiting a frightening scenario, however improbable. Fuqua knew that to do this like Bay or Emmerich wouldn't be enough, so he went with the R rating and the blood. I get it, he's an edgy director. There were times though, that I felt like it was gratuitous. I must be getting old.

The action was great; fights, special effects, use of technology, and explosions. The plot however was pretty shallow and flavorless. The characters were dull, and their decisions were constantly impotent, erroneous, and unrealistic. Butler however, was pretty fun to watch. The revenge factor was high once he started his rampage, and as awful as his one-liners were, they were kind of fun.

I can't recommend this film, but if you're curious, and you like violence and action, it's a bit of a ride. Skip the full price and see a matinee. Or better yet, wait until it's on Netflix and pop some corn on a Friday night. It's making a ton of money, and has gotten some great reviews, which is baffling. I'd love to know what you thought. 5/10.