Plot
18 months after the tragic death of the First Lady, all-American boy wonder President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) is preparing to meet the Prime Minister of South Korea to discuss the growing tensions in North Korea. However, a plane attack and lawn invasion later and the President finds himself and his cabinet held hostage in the White House’s bunker by elusive terrorist Kang (Rick Yune). With the security slaughtered, it’s up to disgraced former Presidential guard Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) to save his Commander-in-Chief and help avert a nuclear war.
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| Always be careful with fireworks. |
Review
You would swear that Americans actually don’t like their White House. Or any of their presidents for that matter. The amount of films - from Independence Dayto Air Force One to 2012 and a million others – that glorify its destruction is as remarkable as it is unsettling. All the more so considering it is not often the most dramatic event of the film. In this sense then Olympus Has Fallen is a first: after a brief prologue, the entire film dedicates itself to the destruction of the USA’s most famous building. Good on it.
But the work of Emmerich and Michael Bay – the two most fervent destroyers of everything American – is not the prime target of Olympus.
From labored set-up to the cat-and-mouse ventilation-based games, it’s obvious that Olympusdesperately wants to be a modern day Die Hard. However, it unfortunately has neither the humour nor the charm of Bruce Willis’s slaughterfest to come close to matching its long established benchmark.
Enigmatic foreigner terrorist occupies building because of reasons? Check. Burly rugged white man is the only one left who can save that building and everyone inside? Check. Black assistant helps Hero McWhitey over the telephone? Check. Hero meets a bad guy but doesn’t know it’s him and for some reason shares a cigarette? Check. Shooter McHunky makes quips and threats despite the impending wall of doom and death that faces him? They try at least: ‘Let’s play a game of f**k off. You go first’ Banning grunts, cue guffaws aplenty.
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| In a surprising cameo, Ross Geller wet-willys Gerard Butler |
Everything after that though is set in an overly murky darkness, the innumerable grunty fistfights and shoot-outs obscured by an unending dusty gloom. Is this an artistic quirk to represent the impossible odds and impending darkness that faces ‘Murica? Perhaps. Or is it to compensate for the stunted post-production and budget restraints, an effort to hide its copious shortcomings behind the veil of night? Yes. Yes it is.
Olympus has clearly suffered from a rushed post-production to fit a sudden release deadline. Whether this was to avoid competition with Emmerich’s latest assault on the President’s pad - White House Down - released later this year or to crudely coincide with the current high pressure situation brewing in North Korea is unclear, but bottom line: it’s suffered because of it. CGI is often notably incomplete or plainly poor (the Washington Monument’s destruction looks like a PS1 game) and at one point the sound cuts out in such a way that the editors must simply not have noticed. Other small errors – like typos perplexingly – then mount up to create a general impression of mediocrity bordering on apathetic laziness.
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| Vidyer Garmez. |
Unfortunately however, action is the beginning and the end, with characters seeming more like ad-ons merely necessary to give the action something to happen to. Leading men Eckhart and Butler are indistinguishable from one another besides the colour of their hair, while the supporting crew, featuring greats such as Morgan Freeman (Speaker Trumbull) and Melissa Leo (Secretary of Defence Ruth McMillan), are so watery and undeveloped the film needs subtitles just to classify who they are.
Olympus doesn’t believe in ridiculous notions such as ‘development’ and ‘depth,’ not when there are things to blow-up or screens to stare at with sweaty panicked faces. Bottom line, the clearest insight offered into any of the character’s lives is Trumbull’s coffee order. Freeman can doubtlessly expect the Academy’s call at the end of the year for such a heartfelt listing of drinkable things.
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| 'Why am I here again??' |
Talking of Melissa Leo, her ludicrous chanting of the Pledge of Allegiance whilst being dragged around by the hair typifies the viscous, saccharine dollops of stomach churning patriotism that drowns Olympus from start to finish. A film about an assault on the White House and its subsequent rescue was never going to be short of ‘HOO HA ‘MURICA’ but Olympuspushes the ideal so far down the throat you’d be well advised to bring a sick bucket. Lingering, grandiloquent shots of the ol’ Stars & Stripes; simpering, mournful brassy tunes; the constant reassertion of American pride and spirit: Olympus is the single greatest DudeBro fellatio-fest this side of Act of Valor.
Olympus Has Fallen is simultaneously bigger and emptier – dumber in the wrong way - than its apotheosised forebearer Die Hard. It is almost the perfect embodiment of ‘generic.’ The antagonists have their motives – some sort of convoluted vengeance plan – but it doesn’t matter. The style of the presentation is such that any half-discerning viewer will know exactly what to expect from explodey start to countdown finish; whatever happens in-between is rendered irrelevant by the sheer uniformity of its trajectory. It isn’t a tiresome experience – some scenes should get the adrenaline pumping – but you’re likely to forget the entire thing halfway through the walk home in a Kaiser Soze blip of the mind.
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| D-d-d-drop the bass! |
Verdict
Olympus Has Fallen is the ultimate exercise in down-the-line action; it does not even try to do anything remotely new and is happy to stick to its guns, as it were. With a spare few hours and a box of popcorn, it’s perfectly merry escapism. But Die Hard it ain’t.
2/5 – or – 3/5with a mate and a couple of cans.
HOOOOOO HAAAAAAAA TRAILAAAAA:
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