Olympus Has Fallen
We learn a few lessons when North Korean (or is it
South Korean) terrorists attack, and successfully take, the White House in
Millennium Pictures’ Olympus Has Fallen.
First off, that even though 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is supposedly the “most
heavily protected building in the world” it can be over-run with comic ease by
what amounts to a well-funded, decently coordinated street gang. The whole
violent incursion is a flimsy excuse to perpetrate a third-world style coop on
American soil – complete with smoking capital shots, machine gun-toting men in
ski masks and ammunition, ammunition, ammunition as far as the eye can see. Let
me tell you, if Gerard Butler wasn’t so proficient at the patented
around-the-corner-no-look-straight-to-the-head kill-shot, Harvey Dent might
never have gotten out of there.
Yes, the President is being held hostage in a
White House bunker, along with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the
Vice-President and the Secretary of Defense (remember the comic ineptitude of
America’s security apparatus). The bad-guys are down there and they are
extracting launch codes. Which brings us to lesson number 2: torture works. And
it is not just the shady Koreans. Witness our vigilante hero stabbing
unsuspecting captives in the throat to entice their buddies to divulge a totally
useless piece of information. I guess America is fully over that whole messy
Abu Ghraib thing then? No, now is not the time to pussy-foot around, just ask
Dylan McDermott: “Globalization!” “Wall Street!” The only way to exact justice
is by any means necessary. Everyone’s cards are on the table and you gotta know
when to play ‘em, even if you bet your soul in the process.
In the end, this movie suffers from a total
failure of anyone involved to question the validity of the counter-argument;
or, really, what is at stake. When the President is being held hostage, with
the nuclear codes, in a bunker, with all the other people with the codes, from
a place where those codes can be deployed to wreck a nuclear holocaust, it is
understandable that the antagonist would want to by the one setting the tone of
the debate. Yet the counter is never broached: umm… this guy has zero bargaining
chips beyond the President. Aaron Eckhardt’s classic good looks are the whole
show. There is never any case for why this
man must survive. If it is only because he is the President, then the
minute Morgan Freeman takes-up the mantle, the whole drama is erased. If you
don’t buy that this control over the office-as-embodiment makes our villain powerful,
then the whole premise of the movie falls apart and turns into little more than
a farce. And farce, sweet dear lord, farce it is. The whole thing could sound
like a twisted Bob Newhart sketch. “What? You say you’ve got the President? And
to get him back we have to start World War 3 and subject our country to nuclear
holocaust? Listen, fella, let me tell you something about the phrase collateral
damage.” At no point does one waiver from the thought, fuck it, just kill the Aaron
Eckhart and our problems are solved. I suppose that emotion is a worthwhile
experience in and of itself. The movie takes what could be an interesting,
nuanced problem of how to balance the idea of government with national security
and absolutely refuses to say anything novel. Well, better to have
Gerard Butler stab guys in the head anyway.
Here is looking forward to: White House Down. Yes, another one. Bring on Channing Tatum.
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