Gerard Butler rescues career
Olympus Has Fallen
K (out of 4) Starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Rick Yune, Melissa Leo and Angela Bassett. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. 119 minutes. Opens March 22 at major theatres. 14A The White House is occupied by North Korean terrorists, the U.S. President is held hostage and millions of Americans face nuclear annihilation — but can we focus on the real emergency here, people?
Olympus Has Fallen may well be the career last stand for actor/producer Gerard Butler, whose recent strings of bombs have toppled him from the heroic heights of 300 to the rom-com depths of Playing for Keeps.
The Scottish stallion is box-office poison, and he and director Antoine Fuqua ( Training Day) surely know it. Together they shamelessly, and successfully, turn this hoary “Die Hard in the White House” action scenario into something approaching diverting entertainment, even as institutions crumble, heads explode and bodies stack with sickening intensity.
No cliché is too outrageous for them, or for screenwriters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, in the mission to build up Butler while at the same time bucking up sagging American mo- rale. There’s a kid in jeopardy, Old Glory tattered and tossed, the president (Aaron Eckhart) and his peeps bound and battered, and the Washington Monument sliced ’n’ diced — and that’s just to get your blood up.
Olympus Has Fallen also features the most stereotypical portrayals of foreigners since rapacious Russians and surly Arabs lit up 1980s cinema.
The rogue North Koreans led by leering maniac Kang (Rick Yune, a former Bond villain) are so jaw-droppingly evil, the only thing they don’t do is dropkick the presidential puppy off the White House balcony.
They give Butler’s one-man army, “disgraced” Secret Service ace Mike Banning, ample excuse to kick ass, slice throats and impale skulls as he seeks to save his career, the president and America, in that order.
I put “disgraced” in quotes because Olympus Has Fallen loves to have it both ways (and this includes having two presidents, the real one played by Eckhart and the acting one played by Morgan Freeman, as house speaker).
A prologue shows us Banning manfully attending to an emergency that threatens the lives of the president and first lady (Ashley Judd). Jump ahead six months, and Banning is an outcast, banished to a desk job at the treasury department as punishment for a tragedy not of his making.
But who you gonna call when the godless Commies launch a coordinated air and ground assault on Washington, D.C., the White House and the nation’s nuclear-defense system, in scenes that chillingly evoke the horror of 9/11?
Maybe not Banning, who is still in the doghouse. But when he manages to force his way into the occupied White House, literally leaping over the bodies of tourists, police and guards killed in the attack, he becomes “the best hope you’ve got” to redeem himself, to avert nuclear catastrophe and to close “the gates of hell” (say this last bit with Morgan Freeman authority).
It all goes down shockingly well, even if Butler lacks the sarcastic wit of Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger and even as the film keeps upping the eye-rolling quotient with cartoon characters. We get Angela Bassett as a tight-assed secret service director, Robert Forster as a stiff-necked general and Melissa Leo as an attention-grabbing secretary of defense.
We also get Radha Mitchell, once an action woman ( Pitch Black) now reduced to playing the role of Banning’s long-suffering wife. In the film’s silliest moment (and there are many), she gets a cellphone call from hubby, taking a break from booting North Korean butt, who tells her that he’s gonna have to miss date night yet again, honey. He has a nation to rescue!
It’s impossible to watch Olympus Has Fallen without pondering what effect this racially provocative movie will have on real-life relations between the U.S. and North Korea, which are the opposite of friendly at the moment.
And you can’t help wondering if we’re all being used by a film that could double as a dandy PSA for the CIA, FBI and homeland security. America’s top spooks are undoubtedly very happy to scare the pants off Americans (and their budget-conscious Congressmen) who might otherwise dare question the billions spent on defense and security.
Didja see how easily those savages invaded the White House? You don’t want that to happen, do ya?
Let’s not forget our No. 1concern: can Olympus Has Fallen revive the career of Gerard Butler? The box office will rule (I’m betting the film does gangbusters), but if all else fails, there’s surely a spot in the roster for the burly Scot in the next chapter of The Expendables.