Olympus Has Fallen (2013, Dir. Antoine Fuqua, USA) (Cert: 15/R) **

 

Starring: Gerard Butler, Rick Yune, Morgan Freeman

 

Eighteen months after being removed from personal security for the President (Aaron Eckhart) due to the failure to save the life of the First Lady (Ashley Judd) White House security officer Mike Banning (Butler) goes on a mission to rescue the President when a North Korean terrorist organisation takes control of the White House.

 

When Air Force One was released in 1997, many people dubbed it “Die Hard On A Plane”. It was far from the first film to be heavily influenced by the 1988 Bruce Willis movie (in fact, Die Hard has probably been the most influential action movie of the last 25 years). Well, now with Olympus Has Fallen we have Die Hard In The White House; borrowing the concept of using a lone-man action movie within a Presidential setting. Given that the film stars the undoubtedly manly Gerard Butler in a role suited to an action-heavy environment, Olympus Has Fallen should be superior given that Air Force One was an aging Harrison Ford playing a distinctly middle-aged President in combat-mode.

 The fight sequences in Olympus Has Fallen are impressive, especially the close-quarters fights and the film is snappily-edited but on a moralistic front, the film is in contentious territory. For the gung-ho patriotic and conservative audience of the US, Olympus Has Fallen has a fair amount to recommend it story-wise. A decisively post-9/11 film (the top of the Washington Monument is cleaved off with a plane wing and looks eerily like one of the World Trade Centre towers in the 2001 terror attacks) but for those with a more progressive slant, there may be issues with a lack of moral complexity even in circumstances that do seem shady (Butler’s ruthless actions would cross certain ethical boundaries for a lot of people) and portrayals of North Koreans that border if not completely fall into offensive territory (there is, to my memory, all but one East Asian in the entire film who isn’t an antagonist. One in a large cast. The use of suicide bombings is hardly sensitive either). Regardless of your political views, the film is at its best when it covers the events in the back-rooms with Morgan Freeman in an almost docu-drama style as the action is too flamboyant and unrealistic. If they’d focused on the quieter stuff this would’ve been a much more interesting film. As it is, it’s too dark and too disturbing to be really worth recommending.