Olympus Has Fallen
43/7.3 on MT…
Any good? reviews?
I heard this negative review on Fresh Air the other day by David Edelstein. It made me not want to see the movie.
(EDIT: Though, I should add, that at the same time, a part of me REALLY wants to see this movie now, the 12 year old boy inside).
I saw it, in anticipation of the podcast. It was full of characters doing dumb things, behaving with wild inconsistency, making dumb decisions, and generally not having been written as real people.
BUT, it certainly brought back the Die Hard vibe of the lone dude, stuck in the belly of the beast, and doing everything to gum up the works and take out the bad guys. Olympus has Fallen is no Die Hard, and Gerard Butler, although not without charm, is no Bruce Willis. Still, it beats the hell out of the last few actual Die Hard sequels in the ‘F’ yeah, take that you nasty terrorists’ department.
Lima, Charlie, Hashtag.
Hashtag?
Hashtag!
Shift 3!
Yep, exactly. It’s Die Hard meets Clear and Present Danger.
I liked the opening, the set up for his emotional attachment to the rescue. I agree the movie was predictable, but not in a terrible way. It’s too bad they didn’t have a few more clichéd, quotable one liners, but this is a small complaint.
Haha! I just read that review and now I feel guilty for liking the hell out of the movie.
Edelstein isn’t wrong. I cringed a few times watching the carnage, but the setup he’s talking about manages to hit all the right notes. What can I say?
I saw the movie this afternoon and enjoyed it immensely.
I am a huge fan of the “mindless” action film genre. I also happily forked over $14 to see Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to the big screen in January. I cheered along with the rest of the audience as Sylvester Stallone racked up the kill count in the latest Rambo film back in early 2008. I also count Behind Enemy Lines among the top films that I have ever seen.
This isn’t elite cinema. There aren’t any complicated messages. These are unreflective, at times unapologetic films that follow the old model familiar to any fan of the six-gun Western: there’s a good guy, and there’s a bad guy. The good guy always wins.
Edelstein starts off as if he wants to use the film, which unabashedly plays on male fantasies of the post-9/11 era, to explore whether there is something unique, or else especially dangerous, in this kind of tale, with its overwhelming certitude and celebration of double-barreled violence. He then proceeds to veer off-course almost immediately. Instead of making his point directly, he offers a Freudian analysis of the genre, then bemoans the sheer scale of violence, without actually dwelling on the problem of desensitization. In other words, I get the sense, knowing nothing else about Edelstein, that he doesn’t enjoy popcorn action – making the outcome of this review a foregone conclusion – and hopes to get a bit of mileage by appearing properly thoughtful when it comes to this topic of shoot-‘em’-ups.
The real question for somebody looking to make a moral judgment about this kind of film-making is whether it taps into something that is (A) uniquely American, and therefore theoretically changeable, or (B) generally very human, and much more difficult to address. While Hollywood may do these kinds of films best, the flinty martial hero is a stock character in every culture. The emotions that this story evokes in the audience are universally human.
One last point. Film critics seem to like best movies with a great deal of grey area, which often reflects skillful characterization and demands that actors demonstrate a relatively broader range of emotion. They also enjoy movies with anti-heroes, since villainy is so captivating and ugly. A straightforward story about good guys and bad guys is “predictable,” even one-dimensional. Worse, it “simplifies” what is complicated, which is supposed to be inherently bad. But at what point was anybody watching this movie supposed to reasonably ask themselves, “What about North Korea’s perspective?”
I had no idea the White House secret service learned their military combat skills from the Stormtroopers in Star Wars.
I generally enjoy mindless “leave your brain at the door” Hollywood action flicks but this one… yeesh. Terrible, just terrible. Out of the two hours, I enjoyed one thing out of this movie, which I’ll copy and paste from above:
Lima, Charlie, Hashtag.
Hashtag?
Hashtag!Shift 3!
I love how all the true Americans got a chance to redeem themselves before the end of the movie. That must have been an important marketing decision or something because it had no relevance at all toward the plot. I also enjoyed how he killed one terrorist with a bust of Abe Lincoln. Abe is enjoying a Hollywood vogue this year that no other 19th century president has ever had.
If you generally enjoy movies of this type, what, specifically, about this movie so repelled you? “Lone hero” movies almost always give state and federal law enforcement the “Stormtrooper” treatment. It was true in Clear and Present Danger, true in The Rock, and again in the Die Hard films.
I agree that the movie had major blunders, namely the acting president’s willingness to negotiate for the life of the current president, lack of man-portable anti-aircraft weapons on the White House or adjacent rooftops, and the acknowledged disregard of protocol when securing the president after the 9-9-9 alert, but you had to know by default, going through the door, that the White House protective detail was just going to get blown away. I thought they did a mostly good job of making it plausible: the attackers were trained commandos striking from within the security perimeter from behind cover, with the support of snipers and machine guns. Yes, the movie contrived to have the last of the defenders move from cover to confront a pair of machine guns, but poor lines-of-sight and total lack of battlefield awareness were semi-plausible excuses.
Lincoln is the only nineteenth-century president that most Americans still remember. The presidencies of the Founding Fathers are often perceived to pale in comparison to their Revolutionary War era accomplishments. Grant was otherwise a drunk in popular memory, and Jackson a confirmed asshole. William Taft was exceptionally fat.
You’re taking all the fun out of my Abe Lincoln joke. :(
Regardless of whether a person liked Olympus Has Fallen, any form of the word “plausible” does not belong with three subforums of a discussion of this movie!
-Tom
I’ll have to go back and re-watch these films. Maybe as I’m getting older, my threshold for “implausibility” has been changing.
A sequel has been approved. Echkhart, Butler, and Freeman go to London.
I would rather see a sequel to White House Down. Not that I’d care to see a sequel to either Olympus Has Fallen or White House Down, but if I had to choose, I’d rather see a sequel to White House Down. TRUE STORY.
-TomWhite House Down had a sense of humor at least.
10 Downing Street Down has a dismal sort of ring to it compared to the US version.
Here’s the trailer for London Has Fallen
The sequel to the worldwide smash hit Olympus Has Fallen begins in London, where the British Prime Minister has passed away under mysterious circumstances. His funeral is a must-attend event for leaders of the western world. But what starts out as the most protected event on earth, turns into a deadly plot to kill the world’s most powerful leaders, devastate every known landmark in the British capital, and unleash a terrifying vision of the future. Only three people have any hope of stopping it: the President of the United States, his formidable secret service head (Gerard Butler), and an English MI-6 agent who rightly trusts no one.
As long as they don’t blow up the production studios at Cardiff … /Whovian
Calling it now, the Prime Minister faked his death in order to reclaim all the former colonies.