When one makes a movie like Olympus Has Fallen, there are certain things that must be included in order to entertain the action junkie crowd: Good special effects, and at least a semi-original premise. But in a stupefying failure, this enormous load of cinematic anus failures to deliver on both fronts. Not only does it share its premise with another film that came out just months after it, but it features fake CGI, horrible acting, and an altogether ugly moviegoing experience. It’s almost as if the special effects were rushed in order to get this thing into theaters ahead of White House Down, so it would look like the better and more original film. However, it is neither. And yes, you cannot write a review about this movie without mentioning White House Down. They’re basically the same thing.
Olympus Has Fallen stars Gerard Butler as Mike Banning, a retired secret service agent who once worked for the president (Aaron Eckhart) until Eckhart’s wife died under unfortunate circumstances. Banning now has a wife, who we only see for about two minutes of the film, and has a strong attachment to the president’s son. Which is kind of creepy. Anyway, I’m not a fan of Butler, as he’s the guy who in the past has given us such great lines of dialogue as “Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!!!” He’s a flat, emotionally blank, and useless actor who really has no charisma on the screen. Eckhart, meanwhile, I actually respect as an actor after his tour de force in Thank You For Smoking. But after seeing this, I have some serious doubts about his acting capability. That’s how bad it is.
Really, none of the actors can be blamed for this unimaginative and unpleasant movie, as it features horrible dialogue and a premise that has been done one too many times. Because, as it always does in these movies, another ordinary day in the White House goes to shit after North Korean terrorists take over the White House and lock themselves in the president’s bunker. Butler, meanwhile, runs all the way over to the White House from his desk job, charges past all the attacking commandos, and ends up as the only guy alive. This scene is not only ludicrous, it’s legitimately painful to watch-- the movie tries to pay some kind of respect to America by having a grandiose sequence in which the flag falls from the top of the White House. But instead, it feels really, really mean-spirited.
And that’s the main reason why I found Olympus Has Fallen to be so awful. Because even though its twin movie White House Down shares the same premise, they might as well have been separated at birth when it comes to the execution. White House Down may have been dumb, but at least it was dumb fun. Watching Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx run around the White House shooting shit up is not highbrow filmmaking in any way, but it’s light years ahead of what Olympus Has Fallen is. Instead of trying to be the simple and fun summer movie it should have been, OHF pretends to be a darker, shadowy reflection of WHD. Neither are good, but at least the latter is a cartoon, and it didn’t have the walls of the White House get painted with the blood of the secret service. Uncool, Antoine Fuqua. Uncool.
Honestly, as infuriating as this movie’s depiction of the events is, it’s not something to get angry about. Because the whole thing is utterly forgettable. You’d assume that a movie with nothing else going for it like OHF would at least provide some decent visuals. Unfortunately, you would assume wrong. The CGI in this movie is ridiculously bad, especially in the scenes with a North Korean cargo plane modified to house miniguns. The thing looks like it took about five minutes to render on a computer, and looks even faker than the effects in Lockout (2012). And again, we’re treated to some truly unsettling images of faceless attackers mowing down innocent civilians. And no, I’m not saying that action movies shouldn’t have some people die (that’s stupid). But it shouldn’t show the deaths in such an offhanded manner. The movie is really an incredible middle finger to good taste on every level, and I can’t even recommend it to the action junkie crowd.
Final Score for Olympus Has Fallen: 2/10 stars. I thought for a while that I had been too easy on White House Down, but after seeing this, I stand by my rating. WHD was fun popcorn entertainment, but OHF will make you feel sick to your stomach. It’s just a horrible, horrible mess that just so happens to have Morgan Freeman in a few minutes of it. It scores a few points for Aaron Eckhart’s earnestness and a quick Breaking Bad reference, but other than that, this movie should be avoided like the plague. It’s the anus of cinema.
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