Olympus Has Fallen

            January and February are seen as a dumping ground for movies that wouldn't release well at any other time of the year.  April is when films take a tentative step upwards in preparation for the beginning of blockbuster season in May.  So what the hell is March for?

            I'm starting to think it's exclusively for decent comedies and terrible action films.

            On to the review!

            Yesterday I shelled out $11 to see Olympus Has Fallen, a new film by Antoine Fuqua, a man who has had, shall we say, his ups and downs.  He's helmed some fantastic films such as Training Day and The Replacement Killers while also giving us such forgettable movies like Shooter and King Arthur.  I'm just going to go ahead and give you a TL;DR on this one:  Olympus Has Fallen is possibly his worst movie ever.

            In it, President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) is taken hostage by a terrorist organization that wants North Korea to invade South Korea.  There's more to it than that, but that's the gist.  Everything runs flawlessly during the attack on the White House (code name Olympus) except for one tiny little detail.  Former Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) survives the initial attack on the White House and is now freely roaming its halls, attempting to save the day and assuage the guilt he has from an earlier failure.

            Of course Banning is a one-man murdering machine and he may actually succeed at taking down a terrorist organization that successfully murdered every single Secret Service Agent in the White House.

            Basically, Olympus Has Fallen wants to be like the reboot of Red Dawn with some Die Hard thrown in by making Butler just as unstoppable as Bruce Willis.  What it ends up doing is quite literally trying to give all of America a handjob while simultaneously massaging our egos.  "Hey, even if terrorists did attack the very center of our nation, someone, somehow, will kill the shit out of them and then we'll be even stronger than before."

            The problem is, in order for this attack to have been successful in the real world, we as a nation would quite literally have to fall into a coma.  There is no other way that the sheer stupidity and lack of common sense evident in this film could ever occur.

            Now, I'm not against suspension of belief in order to enjoy a movie.  But as someone who absolutely loves war movies and battle tactics, I can only suspend my belief, not completely disregard reality.  The entire film treats everyone who is not Gerard Butler, from soldiers and police officers all the way up to Pentagon generals, as tactical neophytes.  Banning is quite literally the only person in the entire film who can do anything other than point a gun and say 'bang.'

            The worst part is that Olympus Has Fallen absolutely wastes talented actors.  Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett and Dylan McDermott are merely there to keep the movie afloat when Butler is off camera. 

            On top of that, the bad guy is so damn ridiculously one-dimensional and over-the-top that I feel like they really shouldn't have cast such a talented man in Rick Yune.  It seems like the movie wanted to make him Butler's foil just like Alan Rickman was to Bruce Willis. The problem is, Rickman had a script to work from and scenery to chew.  Poor Mr. Yune has neither of those things.

            Should you go see Olympus Has Fallen?  No, no you should not.  If you must watch an Antoine Fuqua movie that involves a good actor and lots of guns, go re-watch Tears of the Sun.  Even though that's not exactly a great movie, it's an Oscar contender compared to this.