(dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2013)
What a pitch meeting that must have been for "Olympus Has Fallen," no doubt full of wit, passion, and intellectual volleyball...
Director: "So we have this idea for a movie..."
Studio executive: "Stop right there, where do I sign!?"
It helps to know this is actually the executive's 7 year old son sitting in the office of his father, who's caught in a meeting. But details aren't important.
And there might as well be the motto of "Olympus Has Fallen": Details aren't important. For here is a movie that seems to have been assembled from yard sales of better movies. Explosions? Check. Troubled hero seeking redemption? Check. Shots of men leaning over tables, mouth agape, as they watch startling footage on televisions? Check. Actual friggin countdown clock for some kind of bomb? Double check.
"Olympus Has Fallen" isn't a challenging movie. It isn't a profound movie. It isn't a groundbreaking movie. But it is, by all technical definition, a "movie." As such, the most elemental question one must ask when the lights come back up is, "Am I unhappy with how I spent these two hours?"
Although the answer might only be about 75% , that's high enough for a passing grade if we're using college scales. Director Antoine Fuqua and crew seem to interpret the word "stupid" as a personal challenge, but so cheerfully and so gleefully! I can't remember the last time I saw something so thoroughly wrong-headed while at the same time caring so little. The whole thing is such a delirious assault of stuff that if you concede defeat and go along for the ride, it works, in an admirably goofy way.
With the ulterior motive of supplying future film classes with a scavenger hunt for cliches, "Olympus Has Fallen" concerns Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, perpetually posing for the movie poster), former Secret Service agent who regrettably allowed the First Lady to perish in a car accident while trying to save the president (Aaron Eckhart). Now he works a desk job in the treasury department, but when North Korean baddies invade the White House and hold the president hostage, only one man can save them all! One man that North Korea didn't count on! It's only exclamation points from here on out!
For a movie that devotes its entire first reel developing that tragic back story for Butler, Fuqua and screenwriters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt don't seem to give one cheery damn about it once the mayhem kicks in. Tacked on in a half-assed attempt to give the story emotional heft, it's not only steamrolled over for the sake of action, it's entirely forgotten.
This isn't meant to criticize. Just to point out that the movie has one overarching, adamant goal: watch people kill each other real good. Sure, one could criticize the confusing goal of North Korea to launch some secret American missile system that plays like a nuclear MacGuffin. Or the laughably expository dialogue where characters repeat each other's names and job titles and dramatic purposes in case we forgot. Or the inconsistent ease with which Butler evades the bad guys, then runs into them again when the movie decides it's time for a fight scene.
Want to tackle the movie from that angle? I can't in good conscience argue. Keep fighting the good fight. But we're dealing with a movie whose bottom line is the body count, and sweet Lord, what a body count it has! Characters knifed in the head. Helicopters crashing over the West Wing. Fields of faceless citizens mowed right down with machine gun turrets.
If the guys at Pixar animated a snuff film in their spare time, this movie no doubt puts their CG blood level to shame.
"Olympus Has Fallen" coulda used more zest in its screenplay, more spark in its stupidity (although using a Lincoln bust to crush someone's skull was a nice touch). And it uncomfortably straddles the middle ground at times, not sure whether to embrace Roland Emmerich disaster iconography or "so bad it's good" midnight movie cheese.
This is still the stuff from which goofy smiles are born. Watch it in a packed house where sarcastic comments flung at the screen are encouraged. Watch it when it debuts on Starz in three months. Or don't watch it at all. Whatever. "Olympus Has Fallen" has no reason to exist, but I don't deride its existence.
All it lacks is a post-credits shot of a lone White House janitor shoving all the corpses in a pile with a push broom.
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