"Olympus Has Fallen" - 2013 - movie review

It's garbage trucks full of crazed Korean reunification wackos against Leonidis in "Olympus Has Fallen".

In the 20-odd years since the collapse of the Soviet Union Hollywood has been groping around for a dependable foil. In recent years that job has fallen to Fat Boy Kim and the Rodman-ettes from Pyongyang, who've been holding down the fort nobly while everyone waits for the day when Putin will hoist the hammer and sickle once more over the Kremlin. Not content to demonize just one part of the Korean peninsula however the makers of "Olympus Has Fallen" have decided to give their bad guy roots in both North and South Korea, to make him one of those "reunification" extremists! Oh man they're the worst! But wait! Isn't re-unification a good thing? Wouldn't it mean an end to decades of tense, often bloody conflict? Wouldn't it result in the reuniting of countless families ripped apart by arbitrary political lines of demarcation and freedom for 20 million hostages of that walking Cabbage Patch Doll?

Well, whatever. I'll just get on with the story. Gerard Butler is a secret service agent who loses his spot on the Presidential detail when he saves the Commander-in-chief instead of the first lady in the wake of an accident near Camp David (you tell me how that works). He's consigned to working at the Treasury Department and finds himself there one fine day when all hell breaks loose in D.C.

The dastardly reunificationers have infiltrated the highest levels of the South Korean government and enter the White House with the South Korean PM on an official visit. Suddenly the White House comes under attack from the air. The President and South Korean PM are whisked away to the secure bunker underground. Once there the reunis reveal themselves, kill the PM and take the President and several members of his cabinet hostage. 

Turns out what the bad guys are really after are codes to disable nuclear missles in flight; the thinking being that if they have that then they're basically bullet proof. They intend to use the president's son as leverage to jar loose the last of these codes but he escapes early on pulling the rug out from under that dramatic device for some reason I don't quite understand.

Meanwhile outside garbage trucks full of crazed reunis unload on Pennsylvania Avenue and lay seige to the place while the local defensive contingent of Secret Service agents and marines offer themselves up as targets: at one point walking upright out the front door into a hail of machine gun fire and, predicatably, falling like ten pins. Once they're taken care of the reuni madmen go about unloading their seige equipment in a nice, leisurely fashion and settling in for the long haul.

With most of his inept co-workers dead from trying to stop bullets with their heads it's up to GB (who saw the attack coming from his dismal office at Treasury and made his way down to the action on foot) to take on the murderous reunifying horde practically by himself. He'd better hurry too because the official US response to such an attack is apparently; capitulate. It's an M.O. that everyone involved subscribes to, which was a little surprising to be honest with you. But... whatever.

So over at the Pentagon the guys are enjoying a catered dinner or something while monitoring the situation on their big fancy screens (in order to keep up on current events you see) when in walks Speaker of the House Morgan Freeman. As both the President and Vice President are in dispose in the White House bunker he's the acting President and as everyone else has adopted a policy of capitulation he sees no sense in fighting city hall and decides to give our baddie anything he wants. Good thing there's at least one American on the job who isn't going to bend to the wishes of the usurper. (What? Gerard Butler isn't American? You're kidding?)

While all this is going on GB is stealthily working his way through the big house incrementally making things tougher on the seigers while portraits of former presidents look on approvingly and outside... nothing happens. Average folks watch it all on tv at the bar and the army bunks down for the night content that they've got the situation contained.

The whole thing plays out way more like a Roger Moore era Bond film than anything else and maybe that's what it's supposed to be. Now that Bond has gotten serious somebody needs to fill the nonsense void and what could be better than tasking Leonidis with recapturing the White House. "This is Sparta!" I laughed way more than I gasped during "Olympus Has Fallen" and that's okay. It was sort of like watching "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" only with higher production values.

In the end "Olympus Has Fallen" satisfies a certain kind of niche for jingoistic, macho, chest thumping fun. It's not patently bad, though it's not particularly good either. Let's just say that if you like your politics simple ("You sold your soul!" "Oh yeah, well you sold yours first!") your villains hard to pin down (Come on, these are North Koreans, right? Right?) and your heroes foreign (that would be Mr Butler) then this is the movie for you.

Verdict: ★★☆☆☆