Olympus Has Fallen

The timing of Antoine Fuqua’s stupid, stereotype-laden action film could not be more unfortunate. Olympus Has Fallen is a gung-ho “America, Fuck Yeah!” tale where Man’s Man Gerard Butler uses his Man Skills to show North Korea that you can’t beat The Man. Especially when The Man is America. Surely a Die Hard-style film shouldn’t so unashamedly articulate the US’s reactionary revenge fantasies?

Butler stars as a disgraced Secret Service agent who’s called up when terrorists storm the White House and hold the President (Aaron Eckhart), Vice-President and Secretary of State (Melissa Leo) hostage. The revenge symbolism is painful. A bullet hole-riddled flag floats slowly to the ground before terrorists are killed with a bust of Abraham Lincoln’s head. The atrocious, cliché-ridden script boasts such zingers as “Let’s play a game of Fuck Off. You go first”. Meanwhile, Melissa Leo and Morgan Freeman are reduced to bit parts.
There’s also a nasty sadism to the violence, which features a played-for-laughs scene of Butler torturing a couple. There’s none of the fun of Die Hard, just bad writing and endless shooting. Ugh...