Despite the fact that it appears in the spring, Olympus Has Fallen is the ultimate flag-waving summer popcorn flick with plenty of today’s biggest stars.
Main man Gerard Butler has been put to work at a desk after a car accident in which he was involved kills the president’s wife. Soon enough, however, some unforeseen circumstances make it so that he has to save the president, the White House and the entire country. Cram it, desk job!
Things start to go sour during a meeting between the U.S. and South Korean presidents. While they chat, a huge super plane comes whirring into Washington without warning, and starts gunning down everything in sight, including two American fighter planes.
The plane does eventually get shot down, but it crashes straight into the Washington Monument. The movie is heavy on symbolism.
Butler sees what’s going down (he conveniently works across the street), and comes out to kick some terrorist ass.
As everyone scrambles, terrorists posing as tourists start blowing stuff up. Luckily, Butler spots the goons and sneaks into the White House to try and save the president.
Just getting into the White House requires an action sequence that runs approximately 15 minutes and features the murder of about a thousand people. Hand-to-hand combat, you say?
Why not end it with a blunt statue smashed into someone’s head? There are so many shots to the face, exploding bodies and chest blasts that by the end of the sequence it’s boring despite the effort.
Meanwhile, the terrorists have gotten to the president by posing as security for his South Korean counterpart. Now that’s commitment.
A lot of times the background music felt like it was trying too hard to be like The Dark Knight. Heart-pounding orchestral music played as Aaron Eckhart… walked down a hallway. It always felt out of place, and never really mattered since it was playing under so many gunshot sound effects.
There were plenty of head-scratching moments during the movie, but also parts where the characters would repeat themselves to make sure the audience was up to snuff with what was happening. It was an insult to the audience’s intelligence.
What really summed up the film as one of the most self-serious, patriotic action movies ever, might have been Melissa Leo, tortured and beaten, being dragged down a hallway screaming, “I pledge allegiance to the flag!”
