Olympus has Fallen

Yes, I'm reviewing a mainstream film but Olympus has Fallen is so bad that it deserves to be on this site. While a lot of you may already know a bit about the film, I'll still provide a basic summary of the plot. First though I'll just explain how I came to be watching this film; until next week at least, there really is nothing good on, so it was a choice for me and my girlfriend of Morgan freeman sans hair with goggles or Morgan Freeman with hair as well as a suit and tie. Having been told the plot to the first Morgan Freeman film (Oblivion) by a friend neither of us were really interested in Tom Cruise clones fighting intergalactic conspiracies orchestrated by the Vietnamese New Year so we went with Olympus has fallen.

The title takes its name from the codeword 'Olympus' used by the secret service to describe the White House, which in this film becomes the torched and very gloomy house. Opening with a what happened earlier we see Gerard Butler playing Mike Banning, chief bodyguard to President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and good mates to the extent that they box together before going to fundraisers. Then in a demonstration of why you should never drive in a blizzard the presidential car skids on an icy bridge and while Mike pulls his buddy to safety, Mrs President goes plunging, car and all, into an icy lake below. Exit her, oh and Mike and Asher's friendship.

A year and a half later Mike works for the Treasury doing a desk job to show he's an all rounded guy who's as good with spreadsheets as he is with security details. Needless to say he hates it and wants back in guarding Asher, who hates him. Fortunately for Mike this is an America increasingly uncertain of itself and what it is capable of so when some Koreans (possibly North Koreans but here known as the Korean United Front to provide ambiguity) storm the White House in an impressive display of wanton violence, Mike can come to the rescue when everyone else is killed.

Cue a good hour and a half of death, destruction and mayhem that is completely let down by gratituitous profanity from well, everybody, and a stupid subplot about an American traitor (played by Dylan McDermott from American horror story) that ends up being resolved in an equally stupid fashion (having been stabbed by Mike, the traitor, called Forbes, rediscovers his patriotism and after telling Mike where Asher is, let's Mike kill him).

Another subplot, because the main plot is how many Koreans can Gerard Butler kill single-handedly, concerns Cerebus, a failsafe option to destroy nukes after they've been launched, which only three people have the code to. This happen to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Defence Secretary and the President, all of whom give up the codes, the first two on Presidential orders, the last one, off screen (which again lets the film down. Sorry but if you're going to show the underlings being tortured; you show the big cheese being beaten around as well). Once this happens we get a kind of Deus Ex Machina where Mike just manages to input an abort code with three seconds to spare. That last act begged the question; if you have a deactivation code, a failsafe to a failsafe if you will, why isn't there one to change the codes remotely if all three people who have a code are captured by enemy agents. Oh wait that would mean the plot would have no basis at all.

This film could have been a good political thriller but ends up being little more than propaganda so blatant Sergei Eisenstein could have made this film, only more's the pity that he didn't, since such a film would have been infinitely more enjoyable. Instead we are served a film where anyone is fair game for assassination or torture, the female Defence Secretary being kicked and punched repeatedly, to the point where she must have suffered major damage to her internal organs, before finally being half stripped and made to walk, at gunpoint, out of what is left of the White House's front door. If that last scene doesn't have Feminist groups up in arms about the glorification of violence against women, I'll be genuinely flabbergasted with surprise, because I hated watching it.

So does this film have any redeeming features? Well sort of; first there's Aaron Eckhart, who makes such a decent stab at playing a President held hostage, that really he should have been the only non-Korean in the film. Heck if this film had done an Air Force One and featured Mt Eckhart's president retaking his own house while bonding with his kid then my review would have been praising it. Maybe in the remake.

The second is Rick Yune (from Die Another Day and the first Fast and Furious film) who plays Kang, a zealot who manages to be both completely evil and yet completely charming in the tradition of the best Bond villians. He too would have made my version of the film and again, if it had been just him versus Mr Eckhart then this would have been a very good film. Finally there is an amazing plethora of military hardware on display to wet the appetite of any action movie geek. However that's really the tip of another problem with this film; it relies too much on such action to underpin a plot that stretches incredulity so far that we might have to add another 'N' to plug the resulting gap.

Olympus has fallen is the sort of film an actor signs up to when they need money or a much boosted profile because no one bothered to make a film that will genuinely raise a career from obscurity to A-list status. Instead we have a gorefest where torture is so commonplace that the film almost seems to be calling it acceptable and where the main premise, that the President's life is in danger doesn't stand up to the facts. Namely, if the Speaker of the House is made Acting President, surely that means the previous incumbent no longer holds the job, and is therefore, to put it brutally, expendable.

Going back to my earlier point about Cerebus, it makes more sense to secure the country and its interests first and put those of one man second, even if he is the President. When Morgan Freeman shouts at Mike that 'we're talking about the President of the United States', Mike turns around (figuratively speaking) and points out, that Morgan Freeman is now the President. Let's just repeat that; Morgan Freeman is now the President. In which case, Aaron Eckhart's character is expendable and there's no reason to pull forces out of South Korea and the surrounding seas. Such a development however would undermine the idea being communicated, and punctuated by excessive brutality, in this film. Namely, that one man can make a difference.

Such an idea is at the heart of the American story, but if this film tries to talk it up, it also manages to talk it down. Yes, Gerard Butler saves the day, but he shouldn't have to when the President is no longer being held hostage in a bunker but ends up being Morgan Freeman in a command centre. Once that transposition has taken place, the country should be safe (because I'm fairly certain the U.S. military has safeguards backing up safeguards backing up safeguards when it comes to protecting things like the President and Nuclear Weapons) so Mike could have gone to find his doctor wife instead of showing off why he doesn't need to start collecting his pension just yet.

Except Mike does because Gerard Butler is a co-producer on this movie, ensuring it really is a too long CV to show off his talents as an actor. Unfortunately Mr Butler's scriptwriter lets him down and ensures that only Mr Eckhart and Mr Yune are shown as good actors. Sorry, but when something like that happens, its time to consider less involvement in the production side of the films you're starring in. And with that I'm going to sign off with a damming indictment of minus one out of five and say that if you're thinking of seeing this film, don't bother.