ow why in the name of Alan Tapdancing Rickman wasn’t “Olympus Has Fallen” made into “Die Hard 5”? It’s a sad day when “Die Hard” is out Die Harded by a poor imitation. A poor imitation that is helmed by some usually solid talent, but they all get poor marks and a trip to the dunce corner for making a film less tolerable than getting an active weed-whacker shoved into your mouth.
Is it me, or has Antoine Fuqua not made anything worthwhile since “Tears of the Sun?” Unless you think 2004’s “King Arthur” was worthwhile. In which case, boy do you have some low standards.
“Olympus Has Fallen” takes place in an alternate dimension where Washington D.C. has the same level of defense as a 7/11 and follows the desperate struggle of a lone secret service agent attempting to clear the White House of a terrorist insurgency and rescue the president before the dastardly terrorists use a nuclear failsafe system to blow up nukes while they’re still in their silos. And because the alternate reality government leaders have whipped cream for brains, being able to detonate all of our nukes while they’re still in their silos is something you can do, apparently.
This film fails on two major issues, both in the conception process. First, while watching Gerard Butler breeze through the goons like nobody’s business is delightful and pretty damn frightening, there is no tension here. Butler’s character is ex-Special Forces and a highly trained government agent. It’s like watching Muhammad Ali fight a bunch of baby seals. And it gets even more ridiculous when everyone keeps claiming the baby seals are really dangerous, but get taken out with barely any effort.
“Die Hard” is so great because of the tension. John McClane isn’t a badass Special Forces agent. He is a street cop from New York. Relatively speaking, for action movies, he is a fairly normal dude. Gerard Butler is scary and built like a brick house.
The second biggest problem is that I am not buying this scenario. You expect me to believe that a single cargo plane and a handful of troops can take one of the most (if not the most) secure building on the face of the Earth in less than 15 minutes? I don’t care how well-trained these North Korean terrorists are supposed to be, you’re going need some more time to pull this thing off.
On a final note, although this is more of a nitpick, what is with the codenames they use during the movie? Some of them are clearly going with Greek motif — Olympus, Cerberus and Hercules are all used — but others aren’t. Why bother trying to go with the Greek thing, but not commit all the way? That’s just plain lazy.
All in all, “Olympus Has Fallen” is a shamefully dumb “Die Hard” rip-off that deserves to be skipped over to watch something probably a lot more fun.
