Review: Olympus Has Fallen

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★

The White House is under siege in “Olympus Has Fallen” and the fate of the world is on the shoulders of one very badass dude. And no, it’s not Jack Bauer. “Olympus Has Fallen” is the first of two movies we’ll see this year that feature the White House falling to the hands of enemy combatants (see also “White House Down” later this summer).

Gerard Butler plays Mike Banning, a member of the Secret Service who was once President Ben Asher’s (Aaron Eckhart) head bodyguard. He was relieved of the post, or maybe he quit – the film never does explain this very well, after an accident leads to the death of Asher’s wife (Ashley Judd). He now rides a desk at a different government agency.

One regular evening in Washington, the President is welcoming the South Korean Prime Minster when a large-scale attack is launched on the White House. The attack is led by the sinister Kang (Rick Yune) a former North Korean citizen now working for the South Korean government who has apparently been planning this attack most of his life.

With the White House under enemy fire, Banning picks up a gun and walks right in through the front door, somehow managing to miss every bullet being fired across the lawn. Everyone else dies, except him. In the secured underground bunker, Kang is holding the President hostage, along with the Vice President (Phil Austin), the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo) and other White House workers.

One by one, the highly trained Banning begins picking off members of Kang’s army while taunting Kang himself over wireless communication devices, a la Bruce Willis in the original “Die Hard.” He receives his instruction from the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman), who is acting as president, the Secret Service Director (Angela Basset) and the Army Chief of Staff (Robert Forster).

As long as the guns are blazing, “Olympus” is not a painful bore, but is rather enjoyable. Director Antoine Fuqua has already proven himself competent action director. His 2001 film “Training Day” was one of the better police thrillers of the previous decade. He continues to show he has the ability to capture high-octane moments on film, and create tension throughout these sequences.

 His downfall here lies in the screenplay, and that is not his fault. Written by first-timers Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, “Olympus” suffers from rehashed and overused plot devices. Their screenplay is filled with minor subplots that do nothing to advance the story. They are in place to try and create empathy toward our protagonists. The problem is they do not work; they only drag the film along in order for it to clock in right at two hours.

Empathy for Mike Banning never really catches. He’s supposed to be set up as a typical man living in the big city in 2013. He’s obsessed with his job, too obsessed to even notice his wife (Radha Mitchell). President Asher is the same way, although he is president so he needs to be obsessed. That’s the problem with writing presidents in film; you never can truly empathize with him. There are only five men in this world who probably can.

The villains have their own sets of demands, of course, but they don’t seem to justify storming into the White House or killing random innocent civilians either. Their demands are predictable, and don’t even think about trying to take the White House back from them because they already know exactly what the American military will be planning, and they have planned for this. They do have an endgame, too, and its laughable. It revolves around a classified government program. So classified that Gerard Butler doesn’t even know what it is, but not so secret that Korean terrorists found out about it and know exactly what they need to do in order to access it. Hans Gruber and motley crew were more sinister than these guys.

The biggest victim of this botched screenplay is the dialogue. Anytime a character throws his or her head back looking toward the heavens, closes his or her eyes, clenches his or her fists while pumping them into the air and letting out a sorrowful “NO!!” at the top of his or her lungs while the orchestra plays a sappy arrangement, I have to question the writer’s sanity in choosing such overused trash. And I have to feel bad for the actor or actress who has to stand there on set and film that scene over and over again. In this case, the victim was Aaron Eckhart. I’m sorry, Aaron Eckhart.

As long as no one is talking and everyone is just shooting at one another, “Olympus Has Fallen” does its job of being adrenaline pumping action flick. But the lack of substance found in this screenplay really makes the film suffer. And it really does suffer! Since it’s a first time screenplay, I think we can chalk up the issues to that. Not everyone can knock it out of the park on their first step up to the plate.