National Post (National Edition)
OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN
Because great ideas always come in pairs, 2013 features two movies in which a lone Secret Service agent has to rescue the U.S. president after the White House is occupied by a rogue military group.
Roland Emmerich’s White House Down will be released in June. In the meanwhile, there’s Olympus Has Fallen, directed by Antoine Fuqua, the man behind the cop dramas Training Day and Brooklyn’s Finest.
You might expect Fuqua’s film to be the more nuanced. Instead, it seems determined to out-Roland Mr. Emmerich, known for his over-thetop destruction of one city ( Godzilla), multiple cities ( Independence Day) and the entire planet ( The Day After Tomorrow, 2012).
Independence Day’s poster even featured a shot of the White House being zapped by an alien death ray. But Olympus, after an opening sequence designed to make the president (Aaron Eckhart) feel sad and his chief bodyguard (Gerard Butler) feel guilty, takes it up a notch.
You want untrammelled, gratuitous violence? The invading forces strafe the White House from the air, and the film goes out of its way to show civilians, defending soldiers, and even the U.S. flag doing the machine-gun dance of death. Butler’s character dodges the bullets while delivering a futile, one-man chorus of “Look out!” and “Get down!”
As in the recent Red Dawn remake, the bad guys are North Koreans, this time led by Rick Yune ( Die Another Day). Hollywood has learned that the Democratic People’s Republic is the nearest thing to a belligerent superpower (that won’t sue) this side of 1989.
With the president and vicepresident captured and cowering in a White House sub-basement, executive power moves to the Speaker of the House, played by Morgan Freeman. Recalling his presidential turn in Deep Impact 15 years ago, I dearly wanted him to crack his knuckles and announce: “I’m back!”
Instead, he consoles himself with ordering coffee just the way he likes it, and barking orders at a reluctant general. The military man is played by Robert Forster, whose relevant credits include Sgt. Volkom in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past; Lieut. Weber in The Code; and Col. Partington in Me, Myself & Irene.
Freeman also has to oversee the bizarre bickering taking place at the Pentagon. From the get-go we’re told that negotiating with terrorists is out of the question, but then it’s discovered that the president’s son might be in harm’s way. Never mind that the baddies’ demands would reignite the Korean conflict and possibly start a third world war; there’s a child’s safety at stake!
Enter Butler, the one man who can (and probably will) kill all the bad guys, rescue the president, save the child, capture the flag, deliver deadly force, spout one-liners, stop the countdown timer and, in one supremely symbolic moment, knock someone silly with a bust of Lincoln. You’ve been emancipated — from consciousness!
Speaking of heavy symbolism, Butler does most of his emoting in front of strategically placed White House portraits of former presidents Kennedy, Roosevelt, Washington, etc. Though would it be asking too much
Butler does most of his emoting in front of strategically placed White House portraits
to have a cameo of a picture of Rutherford B. Hayes?
There’s also not a lot of work for women in Olympus Has Fallen, except for Angela Bassett as the director of the Secret Service, and Melissa Leo as the (captured) secretary of defence. There’s also Radha Mitchell as Butler’s girlfriend, cast so the two can have a lovey-dovey phone chat late in the movie, with Butler apologizing for having to work late, lots to do, saving the world, ha ha.
There’s so little subtlety in the movie, in fact, that Emmerich is going to have to work overtime to regain his reign of ridiculousness come June. And while Fuqua may not have worried himself too much with logic, he’s clearly conscientious when it comes to ballistics.
Take the scene in which someone fires a rocket at a guardhouse. It destroys the building and, a fraction of a second later, blows out all the windows in a line of parked limos. Thus proving that if you take care of the big explosions, the little ones will take care of themselves. ΣΣ½