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Modern
cinema revels so frequently in destruction and chaos that it is
extraordinary
that a film as unambitious and appalling as Olympus
Has Fallen can surprise you in the way that it fetishises big
guns,
explosions, high body counts and the demolition of various American
monuments.
Mindless blockbusters like this sell to teenage boys on the promise of
more
explosions and less brains. This is more disturbing considering
how long the
film lingers over people blown to bits and buildings destroyed.
Derivative and
poorly scripted, Olympus Has Fallen will
put you to sleep with its sluggish pacing and relentlessly dull action
scenes,
or make your skin crawl with its chest-beating and laughable
celebration of all
things born in good old USA.
The
director was Antoine Fuqua (Training Day,
Shooter), who has a long history
as a music video artist. He directed the music video for the song Gangsta's Paradise by rapper Coolio and worked
with Prince and Stevie Wonder too. Here he has paired with novice
screenwriters
Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikit to make a rip-off of the
popular
Clint Eastwood vehicle In the Line of
Fire. Eastwood played an ageing secret service agent, whose inner
demon was
that he failed to save John F. Kennedy, and a lunatic stalking him was
going to
murder the new President. The film excelled because of the limited
physicality
of its central character and the suggestion of murder instead of
outright
gunfire. Where's the tension in Olympus
when the main character is bulletproof, fall proof and endlessly
resourceful,
able to pummel goons with a statue of Honest Abe?
Mike
Banning (Gerard Butler) is a Secret Service guard of the American
President
Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), who is devastated when he fails to save
the
President's wife in a car accident. Eighteen months later, Mike is now
working
in the Treasury Department near the White House. Asher is holding a
meeting
with the President of South Korea, but they are ambushed by Korean
soldiers and
a traitorous secret service officer and taken hostage in the
underground bunker
of the White House. North Korean terrorist Kang (Rick Yune) demands
that the
President's staff (including Melissa Leo) handover the three codes to
the USA's
nuclear weapons and withdraw their soldiers from the DMZ area. Mike
tries to
infiltrate the building, rescue Asher's son Connor (Finley Jacobsen)
and then
the President. He conferences with acting President Trumbull (Morgan
Freeman),
and assures his partner Leah (Radha Mitchell) of his wellbeing.
A
potentially chilling and timely premise of the threat of North Korea is
handled
amateurishly by Fuqua. The opening scenes between Asher and his son in
Camp
David substitute characterisation for cheery mawkishness, and the
bombastic,
over the top attack on the White House lacks important narrative
details. Who
knew that it was so comfortable to enter US airspace with
fighter-bombers? I
found the fear mongering and jingoism in this overlong sequence as
repelling as
the body count. Asian terrorists pop out of nowhere, either wearing
suicide
bombs or firing rocket launchers. Few films in recent memory have been
as
profoundly racist and geocentric as this.
The
action sequences that follow hinge on cheap patriotic sentiment,
including an
unintentionally comical image of an American flag falling in slow
motion, but
without any deeper themes or meaning, they become boring and
repetitive. The
violence is incredibly sadistic, including one unwatchable beating, or
blurred
because of the incoherence of Fuqua's overwrought handheld cameras and
dim
lighting. One interesting technical feat was that the film was shot in
Louisiana not Washington and 1300 special effects shots, along with
sets, were
used to recreate the White House and other stunts.
However,
it is still disturbing that the people involved with this dreck view it
seriously and as ideologically significant. In an interview Gerard
Butler, who also
produced the film, endorsed its overt patriotism: "You
come out of there with so much patriotism and you
feel inspired because really at the end of the day the essence of the
story,
it's a hero's journey." Patriotism is not an appropriate excuse for
demonising other cultures and working as hard as possible to inflate
people's
fears through post-9/11 jingoism. Films are often divorced from
responsibility
because they are fictional but where do we draw the line? You can only
hope
that the people watching this mindless bloodbath will see it for how
ridiculous
and infantile it is.
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