By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: April 3, 2013
A man with experience placed in a situation—set in an expansive building—beyond his training or control must fight his way through several adversaries to save his love interest. That is what Die Hard was in a nutshell. Replace the love interest with a bro-mance between the President and an old bodyguard and you have Olympus Has Fallen.
This film is more Die Hard then the recent A Good Day to Die Hard catastrophe was. They’ve finally put Gerard Butler back in the style of film he should be in – and we have a solid action film! It is quite a relief to see the former Leonidas on screen in something that isn’t rom-com.
Gerard is in his element as a former secret service agent Mike Banning as he takes down bad guys with guns and his fists. The quips and cocky insults Butler pulls are so reminiscent of John McClane, I nearly expected him to say, “Yippee ki-yay mother fucker!”
His brutality is a distinguishable quality unlike that of John McClane, however. While McClane was a cop, Mike Banning is sworn to protect the president and he has no time for laws and rules. This element of his character is intriguing but unfortunately only briefly touched on before it could fully develop.
While it does sing and praise Die Hard, Olympus Has Fallen isn’t on the same level. Strong antagonistic characters are left to the wayside for one-sided, America-hating North Koreans. Having already suffered an attack from them in last year’s Red Dawn remake, the North Koreans are once again the focus of anti-capitalist aggression. They don’t like America and they want them to suffer and that’s about as far as their story goes.
Rick Yune’s portrayal of the evil mastermind Kang doesn’t hold a candle to Alan Rickman’s Gruber. But Kang isn’t trying to be a Gruber. Kang represents the other side of the film that isn’t trying to be a Die Hard rehash. Instead of disguising a bank robbery as a terrorist attack, these guys are just straight out terrorists. These guys are unapologetically, stereotypically “bad” and you aren’t going to form any sort of bond with them at all.
Director Antoine Fuqua has certainly taken an interesting route in his career since Training Day. While keeping the camera tight and making interesting action sequences, he has made less-than stellar films in the last decade. That hasn’t stopped him from continuing on and making unique action films. Always making sure he has strong lead characters, Fuqua—in his best effort—can miss certain pieces of information such as codes being accessed out of thin air or people getting where they shouldn’t. It’s the pacing of the film that keeps Olympus Has Fallen from being truly great. Sure, we are seeing an attack on the White House. But to help build the believability, we as the audience need to be kept in the loop about how things are coming to pass and we are unfortunately left out sometimes.
Along with a good supporting cast including Aaron Eckhart as the President (which makes one think what would have happened if Harvey Dent didn’t get half his face blasted off in The Dark Knight), Olympus Has Fallen is a great action flick with a strong lead character. Parts are certainly not fleshed out as much as one would want and the CGI is certainly below par, but it still beats A Good Day to Die Hard in every way imaginable and is certainly a good start for 2013 in terms of action films.
