Olympus Has Fallen

Yakuza

constitutionus wrote: »

law abiding citizen was fantastic.

i was actually rooting for him to win in the end. rare that happens to me for the "baddie".

Agreed, I didnt see him as that much of a baddie at all - the system was the real baddie (though

going after pretty much anyone linked to the case might be seen as taking things to extremes

)

don ramo

just back from this and after seeing the thoroughly disappointing Evil Dead last night i must say this was a breath of fresh "blow that **** up real good" air, it has a coherent storyline and i do believe an adult actually wrote the script for this one,

its as you expect a lot of gun fights some nice hand to hand here and there, the president is being held by a terrorist while the hero carves his way through the white house, it really holds your attention for the 2 hour run time,

it delivers what it promises, unlike the other film i mentioned,

Nervous Wreck

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

Is he not too old to play Bond?

He's a year younger than Daniel Craig. Looks a good 7 years younger than him though.

Solair

Went to see it (not by choice).

Absolutely awful movie! Worst I've seen in years.

Violence was just totally over the top and the storyline had more holes than swiss cheese and appears to have been written by someone in Transition Year who has a gun and violence fetish.

Weak characters, especially the president and absolutely no development of the chief terrorist or the completely forgettable main character.

I know it's basically shoot 'em up nonsense, but the basic premiss of the story line isn't remotely plausible.

The first of two films this year to use the White House as a back drop for it's action, Olympus Has Fallen is the old one man vs. an army nonsense that when handled correctly can be one hell of a lot of fun. From Antonie Fuqua, OHF follows former Head of presidential security Mike Banning who gets a chance to redeem himself when terrorists openly attack the white house and take the President and his senior staff hostage. It's the kind of trashy, no nonsense action film that 80s cinema specialised in and could very easily be retitled Die Hard in the West Wing.

Opening with a scene that establishes our hero's wounded psyche the film quickly jumps forward 18 months to just another day behind the desk for Banning. Banning is interrupted from the mundanities of desk work by the sound of heavy gun fire and peering out his window sees a large military plane laying waste to down town Washington. Being the hero he runs off to save the day. the initial attack on the city and the storming of the White House is one of the most exhilarating and well handled action scenes in years. It's a perfectly executed set piece where the camera stays focused on the action and tension is created, not through jump cuts and shakey cam but rather a keen eye and an emphasis on keeping it all in focus. There's a sense of symmetry to the action and every single bullet counts.

From here the action is quite low key with it striking a perfect balance between fast and furious fisty cuffs and scenes of Banning sneaking around the in ruins White House. In order to create a little extra tension we witness the efforts of acting President Trumbull and his cabinet to save the day. These scenes may be one note but the performances manage to lift the film far beyond it's meager origins. With a cast that includes Morgan Freeman, Meliss Leo, Robert Foster and Aaron Eckhart there's no shortage of star quality on display.

The real star here is Butler who brings a macho intensity he's been lacking since 300. He's a no nonsense, hard assm as quick with a threat as he his with the knife that he repeatably buries in the head of unwilling terrorists. The violence here is shocking explicit for a 15PG film, many of the hand to hand scenes are on par with last years The Raid and Banning takes great pleasure in repeatedly shooting men and women in the head in graphic detail.

The script, while adequate in establishing an interesting premise with a damaged hero isn't quite as smart as it thinks or needs to be. The attempts at political subtext are poorly implemented and add nothing of note. Great attempts are made to portray Banning as a damaged man, unable to put the past behind him but once the action kicks into gear this is quickly forgotten about. It's quite frustrating as so much time and effort is spent establishing what could have been a rather interesting dynamic to his character. It's clear that Fuqua had ambitions to make a film that was a little more dynamic than we get here and don't be surprised to see a longer director's cut released.

Olympus Has Fallen is not a film that will be celebrated in years to come an could easily have been far more than that sum of it's parts. But taken for what it is, Olympus Has Fallen is a far better than average action film that's expertly shot and not afraid to paint the screen red.

don ramo

Solair wrote: »

Went to see it (not by choice).

Absolutely awful movie! Worst I've seen in years.

arent you the lucky one, i could list about 50 films worse than this that ive seen in the last 3 years, i love how people throw that phrase around when they are literally walking out of the cinema, this film alone is possibly 5 if not 10 times better than the new die hard, in fact die hard probably wished they used this script after that shambles of a film,

Solair

don ramo wrote: »

arent you the lucky one, i could list about 50 films worse than this that ive seen in the last 3 years, i love how people throw that phrase around when they are literally walking out of the cinema, this film alone is possibly 5 if not 10 times better than the new die hard, in fact die hard probably wished they used this script after that shambles of a film,

I nearly did walk out of the cinema half way through! I would have if I wasn't halfway down a row!

The new Die Hard sounds like a total disaster then!

As I was saying though, I didn't pick this movie and wouldn't have gone near it if I'd known what I was about to sit through. It was just an hour and a half of meaningless violence set to a badly written plot.

Not my cup of tea at all.

What really disturbed me was that there were parents there with kids who looked about 12 who seemed to think this was a lovely evenings family entertainment !

D'Agger

Solair wrote: »

appears to have been written by someone in Transition Year who has a gun and violence fetish.

Laughed heartily at this!

Turtyturd

Solair wrote: »

Violence was just totally over the top and the storyline had more holes than swiss cheese and appears to have been written by someone in Transition Year who has a gun and violence fetish.

The storyline is terrible, I said it in one of the other threads but it is like someone played one of the Modern Warfare games and decided to adapt some of it to a movie. But how many of these type of movies have realistic stories?

It's watchable, brainless fun, nothing more.

expectationlost

can we spoiler this thread now that its out


this was ok, i like these what if scenario films, even if its not accurate, so a good action flick, very violent, lots of head shots and stupidity

i thought the movie would play out that butler/benning would actually sacrifice the president, he let the wife go to save the president, i thought he'd let the president go to save the country, because there is no way they'd leave south korea, and compromise their nukes just to save the president, that was the most confusing bit, that they were so intent in saving one guy's life over bigger issues, or was that a point that they were trying to make?

ps

shift 3

!

Mitch Connor

expectationlost wrote: »

can we spoiler this thread now that its out


this was ok, i like these what if scenario films, even if its not accurate, so a good action flick, very violent, lots of head shots and stupidity

i thought the movie would play out that butler/benning would actually sacrifice the president, he let the wife go to save the president, i thought he'd let the president go to save the country, because there is no way they'd leave south korea, and compromise their nukes just to save the president, that was the most confusing bit, that they were so intent in saving one guy's life over bigger issues, or was that a point that they were trying to make?

ps

shift 3

!

That really annoyed me too -

I just can't see America putting millions of lives at risk, the start of possibly a new world war and the destruction of most of America - just to save the president. They would go to great lengths to save their president, but accepting the demands that were placed on them as they did would make America an easy target for all terrorists.

And yeah, the hashtag joke was the low point of the movie - really hated that bit.

Banjaxed82

don ramo wrote: »

just back from this and after seeing the thoroughly disappointing Evil Dead last night i must say this was a breath of fresh "blow that **** up real good" air, it has a coherent storyline and i do believe an adult actually wrote the script for this one,

its as you expect a lot of gun fights some nice hand to hand here and there, the president is being held by a terrorist while the hero carves his way through the white house, it really holds your attention for the 2 hour run time,

it delivers what it promises, unlike the other film i mentioned,

While I wouldn't say it's a breath of fresh air, pound for pound, I found it a more enjoyable experience than Evil Dead.

Ludicrous plot, hilarious (not hilarious) script, but does exactly what says on the tin....yada, yada

don ramo

Banjaxed82 wrote: »

While I wouldn't say it's a breath of fresh air, pound for pound, I found it a more enjoyable experience than Evil Dead.

Ludicrous plot, hilarious (not hilarious) script, but does exactly what says on the tin....yada, yada

i expected the evil dead to be scary or funny, it was neither, i expected this to be a cheesy 90s plot with over the top action, and it delivered its that simple,

constitutionus

went to see this yesterday.

i thought it was great. someone here said it was basically die hard in the white house and its exactly that !

in fact its a better die hard than the last official one.

is it cheesy as feck ?

course it is ! but its an enormous amount of fun, i almost choked on the popcorn it was going down so fast.

theres good and theres bad, its got some of the ropiest CGI that ive ever seen in a big budget film. in fact stuff on telly looks better than the aerial sequences in this. its also fairly slow to take off.

but the battle to take the white house is rousing and VERY well done and once your at that point its full tilt to the end with some fair brutal fight scenes. buttlers chararcter (mike) is a nice balance of decent guy and warrior who some how manages to do some fairly brutal stuff but still impart that its not personal.

ok theyre unapologetically "yay america" but anyone thats followed the cast interviews knew that going in and for a "patriotic" film the baddies aint portrayed in a particualry bad light. in fact the plan nearly works and the "good guys" get one hell of a kicking which ya dont really get to see that often. it turned out to be alot more restrained in that regard than i expected it to be.

in many ways its like micheal bays wet dream and the film nicks transformers music track (or something VERY like it) to score the whole film and it comes off really well.

this film aint gonna win any oscars and its preposterous as hell as a concept, but that doesnt matter as its a shedload of fun. even little things like following mike around the white house as he's taking out bad guys passing president after presidents pictures and busts.

its just something ya dont see in action films , and it lends a role to the white house itself as a character.

all in all this is a great little actioner, well acted by all involved (even the kid isnt annoying ! ) and any ropienes of the CGI can be forgiven for the straight action scenes that are nicely coreagraphed.

8 out of 10 from me.

like a good ol fashioned 80s van damme flick, only with someone that can act.



P.S

Is it just me or is gerard buttler starting to look like jeremy renners da/ big brother ? theres something uncanny going on there.

expectationlost

olympus has not fallen, just ap hacked, seems somebody was inspired by the film

dogski

I think this looks pretty good, can't wait for it

Sleepy

Have to say I enjoyed this. Dumber than a bag of hammers, leave the brain firmly switched off nonsense to enjoy with a few beers.

There's no way the Speaker of the House would do anything in this situation but send in the special forces and throw the dice with the presidents life. The Cerberus system was a nonsense too

TwoShedsJackson

Preposterous doesn't even begin to describe this, still bizarrely entertaining though, in an utterly mindless way.

arch_stanton

I thought this was great fun. Not a brain in its head but for pure entertainment on a Friday night it did the job nicely.

It's probably best not to try to make sense but with the codes

the president orders the first two of his staff to give up their codes as they are getting the crap kicked out of them. What's he going to do then when they want the last code and they beat everyone again? Of course in the end they cracked the last with their supercomputer laptop. Besides, what was everyone with the code doing in the same room? Why didn't the VP have one? [ /spoiler]

Crooked Jack

This was far too cringeworthy to enjoy, even as big dumb fun.
All the Americana bullsh!t was making me sick and then when

the secretary of defence starts reciting the pledge of allegiance as she is being dragged off to be executed

I wanted to walk out

Sitec

"Mustang, this is Big Top. Bringing out the full package". All that's missing is Nicolas Cage

Dempsey

Watched it this evening myself. Good action set pieces but the story is mind numbing stuff and full of holes

President tells em not to negotiate and what do they do? Negotiate! And they concede every time he puts pressure on them. The president should have allowed his chief of staff & defence secretary to die for their country I thought, his plan would have failed completely. Acting President and cabinet were willing to destabilize East Asia and the world wide economic repercussions to maybe save a few high ranking officials in their own government? TBH, with all the american patriotism going on in the film, it showed them to be weak under pressure. And nobody thought he would detonate the warheads in the silo, its the first thing i thought of!

Baked.noodle

My My...

America, **** ya!

Goebbels would cream himself.

Duggy747

I've seen toast more intelligent than this but it was a serviceable action movie, certainly an unashamed Die Hard clone ticking all the boxes in terms of cliches.

It was entertaining, if nothing else, but the CGI was truly awful for a movie with a $70 mill budget. The green screen keying was incredibly noticeable when the Koreans were taking down the American flag and you could see the edges of their bodies flickering against the background.

Doesn't add anything but an alright movie to watch with mates / few beers. Enormous body count to it too, would make the 80's and 90's proud :pac:

Deisler

Its the Die Hard sequal they should have made. Enjoyable thrash.

branie

TwoShedsJackson wrote: »

Preposterous doesn't even begin to describe this, still bizarrely entertaining though, in an utterly mindless way.

I agree. I thought Gerard Butler was very good

cassid

I saw this and white house down, same storyline. White house down is much better in my humble opionion.

Smiles35

cassid wrote: »

I saw this and white house down, same storyline. White house down is much better in my humble opionion.

The trailer won me over on that one. Look's way more entertaining.

Chris_Heilong

This is a much better film than White house down and in the great scheme of things is what really matters.

clappyhappy

Watched this on sat night, really enjoyed it, easy watching, plenty of blowing things up and violence. Nothing over the top though.
Thought the escape plan for the son was a bit far fetched.