Olympus Has Fallen: If only it were so...

Olympus Has Fallen (2013) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rating: R, for strong violence and plenty of profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.22.13

An “exhortation to tweet,” handed to patrons who attended Tuesday evening’s preview screening of this film, asked if we all were ready for a “heart-pounding, nonstop, action-packed thrill ride?”

Hey, you bet; I’m always up for that much entertainment.

Once a suicide bomber blows a hole through the protective fence that surrounds the
White House, terrorists begin to pour through the gap. Seeing his slim chance,
Banning (Gerard Butler) follows quietly from the rear, hoping to pick off any stragglers.
Hey ... it could work!

But having now seen the film, I’m still waiting.

Olympus Has Fallen isn’t a thrill ride; it’s a thoroughly unpleasant, mean-spirited, jingoistic slice of propaganda disguised as a mainstream movie. It’s also insufferably and unforgivably stupid, laced with characters who spout laughably trite dialogue while behaving, for the most part, like cowardly morons.

If our heads of state truly responded like the idiots depicted here in Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt’s offensively brainless script, we’d deserve to be invaded by terrorists.

Attempting to position this bomb as a “thrill ride” also implies at least a certain degree of fun, and you’ll find none of that here. What you will find, under Antoine Fuqua’s hammer-handed direction, is a first act that lovingly depicts the mass slaughter of hundreds, if not thousands, with most victims gorily shredded by high-powered gunfire. The bloodbath goes on and on and on and on. Long past the point of necessity.

Then, for good measure — and to rev up our patriotic fury, donchaknow — we watch the Washington Monument destroyed in a manner uncomfortably similar to the 9/11 shattering of the twin towers. And then Fuqua lays waste to the White House.

Uh-huh. Jolly good fun.

This is the sort of turgid melodrama that forces an actor of Morgan Freeman’s stature — playing the Speaker of the House of Representatives, fergawdsake — to intone the immortal line, “They’ve opened up the gates of hell!” To a melodramatic crescendo from Trevor Morris’ bombastic score, of course.

I’d dismiss this hokey nonsense as a latter-day descendant of 1970s disaster flicks, such as Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, were it not for the nasty political subtext. Otherwise, though, the genre clichés are consistent: Any bit player granted a line of dialogue here — just enough to fix him or her in our minds — is guaranteed to go the way of Star Trek red-shirts. Gratuitously, I might add.

Our hero is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), once a star Secret Service agent in charge of protecting President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), now assigned to desk duty in the Treasury Department, in the wake of events in a rather cruel prologue. That’s typical of the overkill approach Rothenberger and Benedikt take to all elements of their script: no need for credibility or reasonable psychological subtlety, when a sledgehammer will do.

Henry Poole is Here: Whimsical fantasy

Henry Poole Is Here (2008) • View trailer for Henry Poole Is Here
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.15.08
Buy DVD: Henry Poole Is Here • Buy Blu-Ray: Henry Poole Is Here [Blu-ray]

The quiet, unshaven man, some unknown sorrow weighing him down like the chains binding Marley's ghost, pays cash for the dilapidated, cookie-cutter house in a drab, middle-class Los Angeles neighborhood.

He moves in with minimal furniture, closes all the drapes and pulls all the blinds, and withdraws into a subsistence diet of doughnuts, pizza and alcohol. He wants only to be left alone.

Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) only wants to be left alone, and he naively believes
that retreating within his own house will afford that level of privacy. Imagine
his chagrin, then, when the house itself has other ideas...

God — fate, karma, whatever — has other plans.

Henry Poole Is Here is a quiet little treasure: a rare movie that treats faith, hope and religious conviction with a dignity too frequently absent on the big screen. Director Mark Pellington (Arlington Road, The Mothman Prophecies) and writer Albert Torres, making an impressive big-screen scripting debut, deliver a tender, character-driven drama that at times feels very much like 2005's Millions, an equally delicate British film that confronted Earth-bound miracles with a similar compassion.

Pellington's film is unhurried and expectant, much like its central character. The atmosphere and approach are wholly unlike this director's previous films and TV work — notably half a dozen episodes of Cold Case — which tended to be exploitative and amped-up. Not all directors can so successfully alter their approach to fit the material, but Pellington certainly does so here; he's perfectly content to let Torres' narrative unfold at its own measured pace.

The result is painfully intimate — far more authentic than any so-called "reality" project, such as the laughably unpersuasive American Teen — as if we were eavesdropping on this man at the worst possible moment.

At the risk of sounding like a soapbox lecturer, this once again demonstrates the degree to which scripted drama — which is to say, fiction — can feel far more real than staged and hokey "documentaries."

The title character, Henry, is played by Luke Wilson at his mopey, disheveled best. The actor keeps his usual smugness and smart mouth corked (or Pellington does), instead delivering a carefully modulated less-is-more performance. Henry dresses so sloppily, tends to himself so badly, that at first blush he could be mistaken for a street person ... but even a casual glimpse into his eyes reveals intelligence, pain and something else. Betrayal? Anger?

Answers come slowly.

Henry has purchased this house, in this neighborhood, because it's close to the house in which he grew up. That one, sadly, wasn't on the market; instead, he contents himself with occasionally staring at it from across the street. Aside from these visits, and his equally brief sallies to a nearby grocery store, he tries to remain indoors.