In “Olympus Has Fallen,” 40 North Korean commandos, using ordinary weapons, capture the White House and take the president hostage, all in 13 minutes. I guess those sequester budget cuts are really starting to hurt.
The film is a second-rate “Air Force One” mashed up with a third-rate “Die Hard,” with Gerard Butler striving mightily to be charismatic as the One Man Who Can Save the Day. But this unapologetic B-movie at least keeps the action rolling, and the time goes by quickly. To put it another way, I’d rather see Gerard Butler stab a terrorist in the neck than flirt with Katherine Heigl.
Those loco NoKos tear up 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and hold the president (Aaron Eckhart), his veep and top staffers in a bunker 120 feet below ground. Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman) becomes acting president and leads a half-hearted pushback from the Pentagon with the chief of the Secret Service (Angela Bassett) and a top general (Robert Forster).
Mike (Butler) has been demoted from the president’s body team after failing to save a political figure’s life. Disillusioned either by his past or by his similarity to the Clint Eastwood character from “In the Line of Fire,” he is outside the building when the NoKos roll in. They blast away at the Mall in a stolen Air Force fighter jet (don’t we keep those things locked up? Somebody check on this) and blow the top off the Washington Monument before sneak-attacking the president’s home. Somberly, we learn from newscasts that this is the first time the White House has been seized since the War of 1812. Fact check! I think they forgot General Zod pulled it off in 1981.
The special effects, in keeping with the general aura of something you once watched on VHS while drinking a Bartles & Jaymes, are of 1980s quality, although the White House invasion scene is carried off with gusto by director Antoine Fuqua (a B-movie maestro who accidentally once made an A-movie, “Training Day”).
Fuqua’s ability to keep things gung-ho at all times makes this one far better than the recent “Red Dawn” remake or the fifth “Die Hard.”
The script (like that of “Air Force One”) has a lot of fun imagining all the secret emergency stuff that might be available to a president. Mike avails himself to all of it, sneaking up to weapons caches and hidden passages.
Every so often he calls in to banter with the head terrorist, who is played by a dull journeyman, Rick Yune. Guys, Alan Rickman is still around. Why let him go to waste? He’s not Asian, but neither are all the bad guys in this movie.
The screenwriters try, repeatedly, to give Butler a YKY (Yippee-Ki-Yay) line, but the best they can do is odd remarks like, “Why don’t you and I play a game of f – – k off? You go first.” Was that translated from the Korean?
Meanwhile, Fuqua bungles one of their best ideas, a scene in which Mike runs into a colleague he doesn’t know has become a turncoat. Instead of letting the tension come to a slow boil, Fuqua gives it about 30 seconds and has them duke it out. Then again, Fuqua is so sloppy that he has a newscast identify North Korea as being in “Southeast Asia.”
Still, the director is better at his job than Butler is at his: The actor is as all-American as haggis. Not only would 1980s Bruce Willis have done a better job, even Sylvester Stallone would have been superior.
How hard can it be to find a tough guy who can lay down a smirk and some automatic-weapons fire with equal aplomb?