Olympus Has Fallen

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Olympus Has Fallen details the chaos that ensues after the White House is successfully taken hostage by North Korean terrorists – with the President’s (Aaron Eckhart’s Benjamin Asher) only hope for rescue lying in the hands of a disgraced Secret Service agent (Gerard Butler’s Mike Banning). It’s a seemingly foolproof premise that is, to a slight yet palpable degree, squandered by Fuqua, as the filmmaker, working from Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt’s screenplay, simply isn’t able to generate the excitement and tension that one might’ve (naturally) anticipated – with the movie’s midsection, which mostly follows Banning as he skulks about the White House’s dark, cavernous tunnels, proving especially problematic in terms of thrills. It’s rather disappointing, really, given the strength of the villains’ initial attack on the executive mansion, as this almost astonishingly violent sequence contains precisely the sort of energetic feel that’s sorely missing from the remainder of the proceedings. (Fuqua’s incompetent handling of the movie’s hand-to-hand fight scenes – ie shaky camerawork and quick editing – certainly doesn’t help matters.) The end result is a pervasively uneven Die Hard variation that admittedly does fare better than most of Fuqua’s output, with the filmmaker’s consistent reliance on misbegotten directorial tricks not quite able to sink what is undoubtedly a can’t-miss setup.

**1/2 out of ****