Review: Olympus Has Fallen

Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman
Director: Antoine Fuqua

In a few words...: A Die Hard-style movie with North Korean terrorists commandeering the White House.
Rating: 8/10

Beware: SPOILERS AHEAD

One thing this film got eerily correct is the relevancy of it's bad guys. In Antonie Fuqua's latest effort, North Korean terrorists storm the White House and it's left to a disenchanted, on-the-outer Secret Service agent - who, handily, is a Special Forces combat vet and, rather precipitously, has ties to the president, whose house is now under siege by a bunch of gun-toting rebels who have no qualms about assassinating political figures. Early on, the South Korean president, visiting 1600 Pennsylvania, is killed, and the Vice President meets a grisly end, too.


Yes, we've seen it before, in varying ways and with varying degrees of success, the memories of Die Hard's John McClane, the ultimate "guy in the wrong place at the wrong time" character. Gerard Butler's Mike Banning, once a member of the Secret Service President Detail before a horrible accident on a snowy night ends with the death of the First Lady, and now a desk jockey at the Department of Treasury, relegated there because the president cannot look at Banning - who, everyone admits, did the right thing that night - and not see the ghost of his dead wife.

When the North Koreans storm the White House, with an assist from some duplicitous Americans, Banning is everyone's last hope - and particularly the President, who, not surprisingly, is the focus of the terrorists. They want, not only to embarrass the United States of America, but to turn it into a wasteland by detonating nuclear warheads in their silos, as they believe America helped do to North Korea.

Fuqua, whose films Training Day and Tears of the Sun I absolutely love, turns on the action in a big way here. The set pieces, featuring the destruction of some very famous Washington D.C. monuments and locations, when the White House isn't being destroyed by way of turning into a battlefield, are spectacular. Jaw dropping, thrilling, edge-of-your-seat stuff. Of course, you know how it's going to end. The good guy always wins in these films. But that's beside the point, because the journey to the end credits is a wild one. 

Gerard Butler is brilliant as Banning, once an integral part of White House operations, then relegated to the outer, and suddenly back on the Big Stage once more. Sure, he isn't Bruce Willis - you can't help but imagine what Detective John McClane might have done in that situation - but he brings a certain realism to the starring role here. The man is a lethal weapon, totally bad-ass in every way. Where a lot of films shy away from lots of violence, Fuqua ramps up the realism, and the film deserves it's MA15+ (in Australia) rating. It allows Banning to show off his spec ops skills, thinning out the ranks of the North Korean terrorists, dispatching rogue Americans, saving the president's son, and managing some solid one-liners as well as an interesting tit-for-tat antagonistic relationship with the head bad guy along the way, as the body count starts to stack up.

Solid, though without much to do, is Aaron Eckhart as President Benjamin Asher. His personal relationship with Banning is established early on, and the moment - the death of the First Lady - that comes between them, resulting in Banning being removed from the Detail, sets up the rest of the story. After that, as a hostage, he's left with little to do. At least he looks presidential, square-jawed and serious, a little like JFK.

The imagery is what makes this film. The entire White House attack sequence is, for visual effect, the film's crowning moment. But there's more: a toppling Washington Monument, it's top third sheared off by a converted C-130 Hercules loaded for bear with Gatling guns; an ill-advised raid to retake the White House that ends with the destruction of a third of the buukding; Banning waging a one-man war on the terrorists, stabbing, shooting, breaking necks; the bullet-riddled American flag at sunset. It's all there, in what is obviously a patriotic nod to America - natural, when the White House is the main subject - and although Olympus Has Fallen isn't going to win any action films, it's a solid action film with plenty of bang for your buck.