Overview
Olympus Has Fallen is what the studio is calling 'an action movie' and what the Secret Service will likely call 'a comedy'. It's one of two films coming out this year (the other being Roland Emmerich's White House Down) that revolve around 1600 Pennsylvania being overrun by terrorists, and both feel very much like land-based versions of Air Force One feat. 'the hero character' from In The Line Of Fire.
Olympus Has Fallen was directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) whose last film, End of Watch, was a gritty cop drama featuring tense action and crackling dialogue. In Olympus Has Fallen, that action's been dialled up to 11, whilst the dialogue's been dialled back to 'dumb'. The film's first act serves up a truly terrifying and confronting assault on the US capital, albeit one with a fairly tasteless allusion to the collapse of the World Trade Center via a crumbling Washington Monument. The body count fast becomes countless as bombs, rockets and bullets tear shreds through man, metal and even a courageous mutt. Fuqua has certainly proven himself a director prepared to pull no punches in the pursuit of realistic violence, but here he seemed more intent to simply destroy everything the budget permitted. All the same, the first half hour pumps along with enough adrenaline (and even a hint of plausibility to the assault) to sufficiently draw you in.
The problem is, there are still loads of problems. For one, it's unbearably patriotic throughout, including multiple shots of US flags tragically dropped or heroically raised. Then there the barely drawn out characters who are given nothing to work with and are often introduced alongside subtitles bearing their official government role, imputing a bizarre pseudo-documentary feel to the film every time it happens. Beyond that, the military's pig-headed incompetence is terrifically frustrating, the Secret Service's constant breaches of protocol are baffling and the multiple news reports referring to the White House as — I kid you not — 'The Whitehouse', defy belief.
Despite then what he's got to work with in terms of the script, Gerard Butler actually makes for quite an impressive action hero, the elements of which we first saw in 300. He's mercifully spared the traditional 'post-kill' one-liners and even manages to throw a few new tough guy lines into the mix. The same, though, can't be said for Aaron Eckhart as the entirely 'meh' President, Morgan Freeman as the bland Speaker of the House or Rick Yune as the expressionless terrorist leader. All deliver such nothing dialogue, you wonder whether this film might've worked better as an action version of The Artist. Then, however, audiences would have missed out on perhaps the single worst piece of writing for the year, in which a double agent explains his enormous act of treason via the phenomenal catch-all: "Globalisation and f*cking Wall Street!" To be fair, though, that shocker comes in response to the President's equally bad question: "So...what's the going rate for a soul these days?"
Bottom line, Olympus Has Fallen is a fair-to-decent action movie let down by everything that happens in between. If you're looking for some mindless fun and a whole lot of skull-stabbing, then this is the perfect film for you. Just be prepared for a whole lot of head shaking, too.