Get Out of My House!

Review: Olympus has Fallen

"Get out of my house!"

Not once does Gerard Butler (300) as a Secret Service agent or Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight) as the President of the United States growl out such a line in Harrison Ford/Air Force One/"Get off my plane" fashion. But nevertheless, Olympus has Fallen, the first of the year's two White House invasion movies, is a riveting action flick which hails back to such classic shoot 'em up films of decades past.

Directed by action guru Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Shooter), Olympus refuses to rush audiences along as it assembles its characters and story, which only draws us in all the more compared to lesser films which start with the biggest explosion and an assumption characters are the good guys because they are the primary protagonists.

Olympus instead actually lets us get to know its heroes before they invading forces arrive and, it turns out, these are damaged, relatable characters we actually like.
Butler and Eckhart both play their characters as down to earth, exactly the kind of people we want protecting and leading us. They are surrounded by strong supporting cast including Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby), Angela Basset (What's Love Got to Do with It), and Melissa Leo (The Fighter).

Yet more than character development - because let's face it, this is still primarily a big guns-a-blazing film and not a drama, so you can't expect too much in the way of relational depth - is the tension Fuqua builds in Olympus. The movie's slow-boil bubbles up into a crescendoing cascade of bullets, fists, and explosions.

Because Butler and Eckhart each play such an everyman, their health and safety does not feel guaranteed and thus we sit on the edges of our seat, wondering how they will escape such precarious circumstances.

In the end, Olympus may be (hopefully) far-fetched and a bit over the top, but it takes itself seriously enough to be remembered more than, say, last year's similarly themed, fun-but-forgettable Lockout. It seems no reviewer out there can avoid making a comparison to Bruce Willis's Die Hard franchise, so I will only say this: Olympus has Fallen, while not on the same level as the original, is a better sequel to it than any of the actual sequels ever were.

A quick side note: Directed by Roland Emmerich, the next White House invasion movie, White House Down, which stars Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, is due out in a few months and has the luxury of a much bigger budget and likely a PG-13 rating compared to Olympus's R. But Olympus has Fallen came first and, with its mounting suspense and adrenaline-pumping action, sets a high bar for its twin.

The Final Word: Go buy a ticket.