The time has come for me to return to
my sticky, smelly, overpriced seat at the movie theatres! This is my
review of Air Force One Part 2... er, I mean Die Hard the Remake... I
mean Olympus Has Fallen.
So yeah, this isn't exactly the most
original movie to come out in recent years. We've all seen hostage
movies before, some involving the President of the United States. So
what does this one have to offer to make it stand out? At least it's not racist, right? Here's the plot: North Korean
terrorists take over the White House and hold the President hostage
and it's up to Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) to
rescue him before the joint chiefs give in to their demands and put
South Korea's safety in jeopardy. It is a movie with lots of
violence, gore, torture, and profanity: perfect for a date.
Unfortunately for non-Americans like
me, this movie sure does kiss the USA's butt a lot. Be prepared for a
lot of gratuitous American flag shots and unnecessary news reports
telling us things that we just saw happen. But for a movie that
glorifies Americans, there sure are a lot of stupid people. There's
dozens of Secret Service agents charging into the open where machine
gun fire cuts them down. What is this, Call of Duty? There's also the
idiot Army Chief of Staff who sends in helicopters to be ambushed by
an experimental new weapon even after he's informed of it's defensive
readiness. After Banning asks how they'll destroy it, the Chief just
says “don't worry about it” and the attack goes about as well as
expected.
Anyways Olympus Has Fallen has lots of
one-liners, but only about half of them are any good. Some of them
are terrible, others are so bad that they're unintentionally funny.
The movie does benefit from some spectacular special effects, but the
fistfight scenes suffer from that extremely close and choppy editing
that I don't much care for. The rest of the action is pretty good,
thanks in no small part to the directing.
Most of the acting is pretty standard.
The villain is rather stock, nothing new. Nevertheless, Butler's
performance is very good. You can tell that he's having fun with this
role.
Unfortunately, Olympus Has Fallen has
almost as many plotholes as bullet holes. How did an unidentified
plane ever manage to get so close to the White House? Is it really a
big deal for US troops to withdraw from the Korean DMZ? They can
still stay in South Korea, you know. Why did the analysts say that
the bad guy has never been photographed even as they're looking at a
photograph of him? Is it really a big deal for nuclear missiles to
self-destruct while still in their silos? You do know that nuclear
warheads need to be armed in order to be detonated, right?
Oh well, if there's one thing I've
learned from this movie it's that the USA needs even more security. I
guess this is just one of those movies where you need to turn your
brain off for a while in order to truly enjoy. And for the most part
this film is rather fun to watch; you might even laugh at one of the
inadvertently silly parts. It's basically an action film with good
direction and SFX.
Final rating: two and a half stars out
of five.
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