Like the pesky Germans and the Russians before them, the Jihadists have finally been usurped as the stock Hollywood villain. Evil North Koreans are on the scene now, and guess what: they’re here to slam a big plane into the White House lawn. When recently widowed president Asher (Aaron Eckhart) is taken hostage it’s up to painfully generic bodyguard Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) to come to the rescue.
I’ll get this out of the way right now: Olympus Has Fallen isn’t completely terrible. It’s maybe 70 or 80 percent terrible. The whole thing is just incredibly silly, totally implausible and very badly written.The film also displays a complete lack of confidence in its audience, subtitling each scene with unnecessary location and character detail and peppering the dialogue with clunky exposition. Lazy.
Some credit to him, director Antoine Fuqua brings skills to bare in a cloying but unexpected first act and a taut middle section, where a Die Hard-esque cat-and-mouse chase around the crumbling White House gives the wasted Butler a chance to shine.It’s really not enough to redeem the film though, especially given the rest of the action has to stand or fall on some utterly awful, sub-Atari-level visual effects.
It’s been said that when a film becomes so bad it can actually transcend its own flaws and become good again, and broadly speaking the same could be said of this. Just go into the film expecting a comedy and you might end up having a good laugh.
Verdict: 3/10