Gods do not seem to aim too high nowadays, not in the cinema industry anyway. Olympus Has Fallen is one of the relatively successful action movies of 2013. Audiences did not rush in masses but did not avoid it either, critics were not enthusiastic but did not ‘destroy’ it, and it paid back the production costs even before the release of the DVDs and TV runs. So its a good study case about what I do not like in Hollywood action movies 🙂
source www.imdb.com/title/tt2302755/
So, the (American) nation is again under attack in ‘Olympus …’. North Korean are the hard-to-dispute nowadays bad guys, and we know how bad they are from the news, and this film will not tell us more about why they are bad than the news. This time they take the White House which seems to have achieved in the last few years the status of one of the most blown-up buildings in the world (in movies). In the semi-ruins of the White House a semi-renegaded secret agent fights empty-handed to bring back the Universe in balance. He will succeed. The only surprising thing is that his name is not Jack Bauer.
Morgan Freeman seems quite embarrassed to be involved with this film, as the acting President at times of trouble. The rest of the acting stuff (including Gerald Butler and Aaron Eckhart) does the decent job they are paid for, but cannot go much higher or deeper than TV series acting. The dialog does not help them too much, and I especially disliked the naturalistic reaction that the leaders of the nation are shown to take when facing physical danger. Cursing is not the best manner of showing dignity in my opinion. Director Anoine Fuqua is actually doing well his job of bringing action to screen, but with the script at hand he cannot make of ‘Olympus …’ more than a rough action movie in which the events happen to take place in the White House.