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.
