Olympus Has
Fallen
Rise Of The
Heid-Stabber!
When
the most secure, impregnable building in the Free World, the White House, is
attacked and easily captured by an army of ruthless North Korean terrorists and
the U.S. President (constipated Robert Redford-impersonator Aaron Eckhart) is taken hostage by their
vicious leader, Kang (Rick Yune), who’s intent on single-handedly destroying South Korea
and kicking off World War 3, the fate of the world rests on the broad, manly
shoulders of incongruously Scottish, disgraced Secret Service agent Mike
Banning (Gerard Butler) who’s still haunted by his failure to save the First Lady (an
all too brief Ashley Judd) in the freak Christmas car accident (ho, ho, ho!) that
opens the film.
While
statesman-like Speaker of the House Morgan Freeman (played by Morgan Freeman. And just how does Aaron Eckhart get to be the Man when
Morgan Freeman is in the same party?) dithers and the sympathetic Head of the
Secret Service Angela Bassett and douchebag General Robert Forster clash over how best to
handle the crisis (Forster wants to send in the troops while Bassett wants to
let Big Gerry do his thang), the bodies start piling up and it’s up to Mike to
take the fight to the terrorists, rescue the Prez and save the world (or at
least the USA) from nuclear annihilation.
But the countdown to Armageddon is already ticking…
So
jaw-droppingly, astonishingly, blood-splattering violent that practically every
red-blooded, red meat-eating male in the audience will have to hastily cross
their legs in embarrassment and place a coat or bag in their lap to hide the
mahogany they’re sporting, Olympus Has Fallen is dumb, trashy, hugely entertaining,
ultra-violent fun. Sure, it’s also
shockingly xenophobic but the North Koreans are everyone’s current bogeymen of
choice and the dirty S.O.B.s do callously gun down a patriotic American German
Shepherd (along with much of the District of Columbia) during their attack on
the White House so, you know, screw ‘em!
It’s a wonder they didn’t try to barbecue and eat the dog right there in
the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue!
These scumbags deserve to get their coupons chibbed* by Big Gerry Butler!
Practically
every review you read of Olympus Has Fallen will have one thing in common – it
will compare Antoine Fuqua’s muscular slaughter-fest to John McTiernan’s 1988 pared-down,
stripped-to-the-bone, action classic Die Hard.
It’s Die Hard they’ll tell you, in the White House!
They’re
not wrong.
With
its indestructible one-man killing machine taking on an army of evil foreign
terrorists, Olympus Has Fallen does indeed owe a huge debt to Bruce Willis’ finest hour
(or 2 hours 11 minutes if you want to pick nits). But it owes a much larger debt to the Steven Seagal-starring Die Hard knock-off, Under Siege where ship’s cook (and
former SEAL) Seagal is the indestructible one-man killing machine, aided only
by a big-boobed stripper with bigger beetle eyebrows, who must take on an army
of mercenaries/terrorists who have taken over his battleship with the express
intention of nuking Hawaii. Throw in
a pinch of In The Line Of Fire and a scoop of Team America and you’ve got almost the
perfect Saturday night slice of movie wish fulfillment for the modern
emasculated male. In fact,
possibly the only way Olympus Has Fallen could be improved is if it was just
Gerard Butler and Jason Statham punching each other in the face for the entire
two hours running time.
Far
from fresh and original (the similarly-themed White House Down has lunkheaded beefcake Channing
Tatum tread
similar corridors) and in no way subtle, Olympus Has Fallen is stuffed full of slo-mo
shots of the grubby, tattered, bullet-torn Stars ‘n’ Stripes, explosions that
would make Michael Bay tumescent and a visceral, pulse-pounding air attack that
results in such indiscriminate bloody carnage that it makes the opening half
hour of Saving Private Ryan look like Carry On Abroad.
The
supporting cast acquit themselves admirably; while Morgan Freeman is once more
phoning in his customary elder statesman schtick, Eckhart makes a decent,
intense President, Rick Yune is thoroughly despicable as Kang, Dylan
McDermott
is wonderfully slimy as Mike’s traitorous former best bud and Melissa Leo’s Defense Secretary is
tough and ballsy. The same can’t
be said however of the film’s other female actresses with Radha Mitchell, Ashley Judd and, most
unforgivably, Angela Bassett, all criminally underused.
As
untroubled by anything approaching logic and sense as he is by the terrorist
horde, Butler owns the film. Despite a dodgy Mid-Atlantic accent that’s part Sean
Connery and
part Sheena Easton, Big Gerry is at his charismatic, tough guy best, swaggering
through the film, despatching baddies left, right and centre, snapping necks,
popping caps and here a stab, there a stab, everywhere a stab-stab. In fact, given the amount of enemies,
Gerry viciously knives in the face, a better title for the film would have been
Olympus Has Fallen: Rise of the
Heidstabber! You can take the boy out of Paisley
but, on the evidence of his blade work, it seems you can’t take Paisley out of
the boy.
While
it would be easy to dismiss Olympus Has Fallen as ridiculous, violent, jingoistic
twaddle, the film’s greatest strength (other than Butler) is that it knows
exactly what its audience wants and delivers. Big, dumb, loud, thrilling and shamefully entertaining, Olympus
Has Fallen
is the film you’ll wish the last three Die Hards had been.
* coupons chibbed = faces stabbed.
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Genres:
Action,
Thriller
Language:
English
Runtime:
2 hours
Certificate:
15
UK Release Date:
Wednesday 17th
April 2013
Rating:
4/5
Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/olympus-has-fallen/
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