Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
Oh my.
I love the actors who
were cast in this film…Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman amongst others, however I spent much of it in irritation, or cringing, at the heavy-handed symbolisms and obvious tweaks of sensitive
(particularly American) nerve ends.
The foreshadowing: a shot of the White House taken along the
barrel of a static display cannon; the Washington Monument is grazed by the
enemy aircraft, and then smoke billows and the structure collapses in a visual
flash-back to the 9/11 tower. The inevitable symbolic image of a torn and
battered American flag drifting to the ground.
I dislike being so obviously manipulated into “feeling”
certain emotions.
And plausibility…I’m no military strategist and have no
knowledge of how these things are organized, however, I was jolted by the
apparent fact that an alien, unidentified bomber-type aircraft managed to get
so close to Washington before the interceptors arrived to challenge it—and were
promptly shot down by the invader, I may add.
The invasion force of 40 or so, had killed every FBI and
marine guard at the white house in a matter of 13 minutes (strangely, only our
hero thought to dive for cover behind a column—the other agents poured out the
door and stood firing their hand guns at the enemy until they were all mowed
down)…and long before any additional military support could arrive.
Then we have our hero…Gerard Butler in his character of FBI
agent, Mike Banning, proceeding alone in the increasingly ruined White House,
rescuing the president’s young son and killing off the baddies as he works his
way to where the president is held captive. Almost I could hear him saying to chief
bad guy, xxxxxx, “yippee-kai-yeah, Mother F----r”.
There is excitement, however, and with certain misgiving I’d
rate it a 3/5—if you can just roll with it and overlook the things that almost
drop it to the comic book “superhero vs. bad guys” genre.
