“Great” Scott’s Phenomenally
Great DVD Review of Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
Title
Olympus Has Fallen
IMDB Page
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2302755/?ref_=nv_sr_1
One-Sentence Summary
Rip off Die Hard, but make it more over the top, more gratuitously violent, and less logical…and set it in the White House (the titular Olympus).
What’s Great About It
Gerard Butler is a likeable enough hero. Some of the action scenes are good.
What’s Not-So-Great About It
Sweet baby Jesus, this movie is gratuitously violent. It's also one of the most cliché-ridden movies I've ever watched.
Rating
GG
Explanation
Gerard Butler is a disgraced (in his own mind, anyway) CIA agent who is busted down to security at the Department of Treasury building for reasons that are somewhat ridiculous. Anyway, fast forward some amount of time that escapes me and the White House is preparing for a meeting to help avert war between those crazy Koreans. Aaron Eckhart’s face has clearly healed (See that clever nod to Eckhart playing Two Face? See?) and now he’s the President. He’s hosting the South Korean contingent when all hell and clichés break loose!! For the next ten minutes, my television was filled with enough gratuitous violence and blood that it started leaking out of the speakers. Gerard Butler, however, maneuvers through the chaos to help take back the White House. There are some subplots involving the president’s son, nuclear launch codes, and inside betrayal, but are we really watching this movie for subplots?
Olympus Has Fallen
IMDB Page
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2302755/?ref_=nv_sr_1
One-Sentence Summary
Rip off Die Hard, but make it more over the top, more gratuitously violent, and less logical…and set it in the White House (the titular Olympus).
What’s Great About It
Gerard Butler is a likeable enough hero. Some of the action scenes are good.
What’s Not-So-Great About It
Sweet baby Jesus, this movie is gratuitously violent. It's also one of the most cliché-ridden movies I've ever watched.
Rating
GG
Explanation
Gerard Butler is a disgraced (in his own mind, anyway) CIA agent who is busted down to security at the Department of Treasury building for reasons that are somewhat ridiculous. Anyway, fast forward some amount of time that escapes me and the White House is preparing for a meeting to help avert war between those crazy Koreans. Aaron Eckhart’s face has clearly healed (See that clever nod to Eckhart playing Two Face? See?) and now he’s the President. He’s hosting the South Korean contingent when all hell and clichés break loose!! For the next ten minutes, my television was filled with enough gratuitous violence and blood that it started leaking out of the speakers. Gerard Butler, however, maneuvers through the chaos to help take back the White House. There are some subplots involving the president’s son, nuclear launch codes, and inside betrayal, but are we really watching this movie for subplots?
This movie would’ve been a
relatively decent action flick if it wasn’t so damned violent and pathetically clichéd. Disgraced hero looking to redeem himself:
check. Foreign terrorists: check. Impotent police, military, and politicians:
check. Stupid military official who won’t
listen to the hero and ends up getting people hurt/killed: check. Explosion with a timer that seems
ridiculously easy to arm, but ridiculously difficult to disarm: check. There are a few others, but I certainly
wouldn’t want to spoil this in-no-way-obviously-plotted movie. Here’s a fun game you can play while watching
this movie: give everyone in the room a piece of paper (actually, maybe two or
three), and write down how many ways this movie rips off Die Hard. The person with the most correct answers
wins. I can probably come up with about
20 if I tried.
So, in summary, do yourself a
favor and watch Die Hard instead of this movie…unless you’re a huge fan of
Gerard Butler or Bobby Donnell from The Practice.
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