Movie Review - Olympus Has Fallen

With White House Down starting it's run in Australian cinemas pretty soon I thought it would be only fair to see the other recent "invade the White House" movie.  I can't do a direct comparison just yet but perhaps Olympus Has Fallen can give us a taste of what to expect, or put us off the idea entirely.

Olympus Has Fallen sees our hero Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) leave the secret service after a mishap causes tragedy for President Benjamin Asher's (Aaron Eckhart) family.  It looks like he is destined to be a paper pusher but this all changes when a mysterious force takes on, then takes out, the defences of the White House (codenamed Olympus) and takes the President and a number of his staff hostage.  With global tensions mounting and God... sorry Speaker Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) as the acting president can Banning fight the army, rescue the president and save the day?  I'm sure you can guess.

First up, this movie takes itself immensely seriously and goes to great lengths to show you every bit of suffering in as much macabre detail as possible.  Quite early in proceedings literally hundreds of innocent bystanders get mowed down and the camera lingers on as many as possible.  We even get extra slaughter victim close ups as Banning's wife, Leah (Radha Mitchell), happens to be a nurse at the only hospital in Washington that seems to be receiving the injured.  This is a movie full of stern faces and ruthless cruelty.

Imagine if you will that all the actors have been replaced by the seven dwarves and their clones, and that all the other dwarves have been replaced with Grumpy and you should get a good idea about the performances in this movie.  Given the excessive cruelty on display any snappy one liners would just seem crass so it's lucky the makers of this film obviously decided against including any.  And don't think it's just the baddies being cruel, Gerard Butler (hereby renamed Grumpy Butface in honour of his performance in this movie) is just as ruthless in his dealings with the invading force.

Another issue is the invading force itself.  The initial push on the White House comprises of a huge force of baddies, but once inside and secured 90% of them just seem to disappear, leaving Grumpy Buttface a small handful of groups and several lone sentries to take out in a suitably gruesome fashion.

Besides that we have a number of cliches.  The chilling emotionless bad guy, the surprisingly attractive evil computer genius, the precocious child (who initially seemed to be set up to play a big role in proceedings, but ended up being rescued quite early and never mentioned again), and the wise old janitor... sorry, Morgan Freeman.

Despite all of the above you certainly can't discount that this is a quintessential action movie with spectacular action, fist fights and lots of military weaponry being waved about the place.  It's the action that saves the film from becoming a depressing slaughter fest.

I really find it hard to recommend Olympus Has Fallen, but if you are a fan of military hardware and lone wolf action played completely seriously well you should find something to satisfy you here.

In two words - Grumpy Butface