Directed By: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman and Rick Yune
What It’s About: A disgraced Secret Service Agent must infiltrate the White House to save the President and his staff from a band of terrorists.
Rated R (for strong violence and language throughout)
Runtime: 120 minutes
By Aaron Sanders, Diversions Editor
In another case of duplicate film syndrome, Hollywood has two films depicting the homeland invasion of the U.S. capital set for 2013: Antoine Fuqua’s (Training Day, Shooter) Olympus Has Fallen and Roland Emmerich’s (Independence Day, 2012) White House Down. Up first is the Gerard Butler vehicle Olympus Has Fallen, and it’s not half bad.
In Olympus Has Fallen, Gerard Butler is Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, a scrupulous defender and best friend to the President of the United States Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart). However, after the First Lady is killed in a freak car accident under his watch, Banning is forced to quit the Agency for a desk job with the United States Treasury Department. Banning soon finds himself fighting for the President once again after a North Korean military team attacks Washington D.C. and seizes the White House and holds everyone within hostage. Under the leadership of the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman), now acting President, Banning must go toe-to-toe with a notorious terrorist and his small army, John McClane-style.
Like his 2007 action movie Shooter, Antoine Fuqua dishes out another satisfyingly brainless action flick that isn’t completely derivative of every other film of the genre. It takes the setup of the original Die Hard in that the protagonist is trapped in a singular location, forced to improvise against an army and is more than happy to banter with the villain over a walkie-talkie. There’s even a scene reminiscent of the famous first-encounter scene with Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman.
Gerard Butler finally becomes the action hero we were all hoping he would become since 300 (enough with all that Playing for Keeps nonsense). Butler’s Agent Mike Banning is not the broken ex-Special Forces soldier he very well could have been written as. After the disgracing accident with The First Lady, Banning is anxious to get back to work. He has not regressed into a drunken stupor; he has not let shame control his life, which makes the character fresh enough to watch with enthusiasm. In addition to a cast of convincing performances from Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Melissa Leo, Angela Basset and Rick Yune, Olympus has no issues with trying to win over the audience.
Olympus Has Fallen’s overarching conflict eerily mirrors the current real-life U.S.-North Korea tension. An actual North Korean AC-130 attack on the National Park really isn’t as fictional as the film leads you to believe.
Olympus Has Fallen is an above-average Hollywood actioner that is well worth the price of admission for any genre aficionados.
Courtesy of www.metro.us