Bullets are being fired towards the secret service while explosions echo around a nicely trimmed lawn. America’s favorite house is under attack and the president (Aaron Eckhart) has been kidnapped. Now it is up to Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), an ex secret service agent who also has experience as a U.S. Army Ranger, to defeat the terrorists, secure the president, and keep secret nuclear detonation codes from getting into the wrong hands. This certainly is a recipe for an interesting film, too bad it doesn’t deliver.
Olympus Has Fallen has a mediocre supporting cast with the exception of household Hollywood names like Butler and Freeman. This movie has many obvious flaws, some which are victims of bad directing. For instance, the whole shoot out sequence in the movie is a slaughter fest. For instance, the entire shootout was so badly executed that it literally looked like the secret service was intentionally getting in the way of bullets. In one scene during the shootout, a light machine shoots a horde of secret service agents running out one doorway, which in itself does not make sense. It’s almost as if the director had too many extras and didn’t know what to do with them so he moved them to this one scene. If they are specially trained to protect the president, then they probably should not be running to get themselves killed.
This is all generally towards the beginning of the movie. The rest, however, is a cavalcade of weird stage directions from the director that makes everything seem a little off. For instance, the director decided to have an important interrogation scene in the middle of the presidential office, when the hero is supposed to be eluding capture. This is just one of the many scenes in the movie that doesn’t quite add up to what the trailer promised us.
In the end, Olympus Has Fallen turns out to be another lackluster blockbuster promising an adrenalin fueled ride for the audience but gives more of a soda and popcorn infused bore. Olympus Has Fallen gets two bullet hole filled flags out of five.
