Review of Olympus Has Fallen (2013) by Michael P — 11 Dec 2013

A full budget shoot-em-up it is. A thinking movie it is not. I wonder how the armed forces of the U.S.A can continue to put up with this type of movie. Though Gerard Butler does an excellent job of playing the heroic, latecomer, one-man-army, and Aaron Eckhart and the rest of the cast also perform well, this movie is full of armed forces cliches.

Serious problems include the I-know-best general, the tendency of highly trained secret service personal to charge superior firepower (apparently non of them wear vests either), and the fact that in-house codes are the same as when a former agent worked in the white house.

There are a lot of other problems, including the fact that once the president became a liability all his codes, including the so-called Cerebrus would be changed (just like his football codes). For me, a movie which has as its backbone the ability of the American people to recover and excel when faced with adversity, it sure portrayed the leaders of the people as fools, and the protectors of those fools as assets to be sacrificed without thought.

Well, maybe that was the point. In any case, the men and women that lay down their lives in the face of such adversity deserve a better representation, and the viewing audience deserves credit for having a few brain cells.

This movie could have easily been much, much better.