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Olympus Has Fallen: After a driving accident which leaves the First Lady (Ashley Judd) brown bread, Presidential guard Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is kicked out of his high-profile position and into a dull desk job not too far away. Don’t feel too sorry for him, though, as his wife Leah is played by the uber-hot Radha Mitchell.
18 months later, a well-organised large team of Korean rebels turn up at the Whitehouse to attack it, just as the South Korean Prime Minister is indoors, asking the President with help with something that doesn’t really matter because he’s soon taken into the underground bunker where you’d think you’d be safe, but then if he was, there wouldn’t be much of a film.
The attack prompts one of the security staff to inform everyone that “Olympus Has Fallen”, the code for what just happened.
After the President (Aaron Eckhart) & Vice President are in the bunker and unable to take charge of anything, it’s up to the Speaker of the House to become the Acting President, i.e. Morgan Freeman… who was also the President in 1994’s Deep Impact.
What you have is rather a ‘Die Hard in The White House’ and while it’s not as well-written and is entirely predictable, it ticks along at a fair pace and never drags during its two-hour running time, and compared to the majority of 2013’s releases, you can’t say that about most films of that length or longer.
On the plus side, there’s a number of cool shots to the head, or even knives to the head! Nicely violent! However, everything’s CGI’d to within an inch of its life, making a lot of scenes look like an intro to an Xbox 360 game. There’s also a rather poor edit as Gerard is equipping himself just after taking down a baddie, 42 minutes in.
Also, it’s laughable how, after an early massive gunfight – with RPG and chain gun thrown into the mix – only Gerard seems to be left, but then again, he always wanted to get his job back and this should make it easy for him… (something he, in fact, actually jokes about during the film)
As for the cast, Gerard comes off best with this, giving off a few wisecracks through a strangely distorted jaw as if he’s been punched in it – except that he’s been like that from the start; Dylan McDermott is reasonable as Presidential aide Forbes, as is Rick Yune as the main bad guy. However, Eckhart just goes through the motions because he’s not given a lot to do as the President, snarling at being held captive, while Radha Mitchell gets nothing to do but play the simpering wife to Gerard.
Coming later this year is White House Down, a similar actioner starring Channing Tatum. Why do similar films always come out in pairs? Either way, for entertainment value, it’ll be interesting to see if it can improve on providing ‘bang for your buck’, but then it is being directed by Roland Emmerich, so anything is possible.
Olympus Has Fallen also avoids being too jingoistic to the point where it overshadows the action, unlike a lot of Emmerich’s films.
Go to page 2 for a look at the presentation and the extras.
The film is presented in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio and looks superb from start to finish. Crisp, bold colours and a delight for the many action sequences. For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 50″ Plasma TV with a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
It’s difficult to comment on the quality of the print, though. No, I haven’t suddenly lost the use of my eyes, but it’s filmed in Super 16 and with an intentionally grainy look to it. The problem with this is that for the majority of the time, you may as well be watching a DVD.
That said, there’s some very interesting camerawork, in the way that it stays on Max. We learn in the extras that this is down to the Snorricam unit, which the actor is wearing.
The sound has a DTS HD 5.1 option, but while I selected that, it hardly gets used, save for some split-surround audio around 9 minutes in, the rest of the time feeling like a standard stereo soundtrack.
The extras on this disc are as follows and none of them have subtitles:
- Gag Reel (2:26): Does exactly as it says on the tin, and it’s alright but very short.
- Epic Ensemble (6:58): A puff piece where everyone blows smoke up the director’s arse, and then each other. The title of this segment, however, relates to the large cast in this.
- Under Surveillance: The Making of Olympus Has Fallen (11:36): Unlike most Blu-rays and DVDs, this one seems to have started with the shortest extra and work its way up. Here, we get a rather standard ‘making of’. Everyone gives brief pieces-to-camera, saying nothing you don’t expect.
- Deconstructing the Black Hawk Sequence (3:30): This relates to a scene from late in the film with CGI choppers. As they say, it is a great sequence, but this is also an incredibly short extra.
- Ground Combat: Fighting the terrorists (3:02): Choreographing the fisticuffs. Again, way too short to be of any real use.
- Creating the action: VFX and design (7:03): Another mention of how almost everything you see was CGI – as if you haven’t guessed already.
I bemoaned Rebellion for having a complete lack of extras, but is that worse than a disc which has some, but which are very disappointing short? There are six pieces here but nothing goes into any real depth and you don’t feel like you’ve learned much.
The menu features clips from the film against a short piece of the music. Subtitles come in English and the chapters are the usually lame 12 across the 120 minutes.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
8 10 9 2 |
| OVERALL | 7 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 120 minutes
Year: 2013
Released: August 26th 2013
Chapters: 12
Distributor: Lionsgate
Cat.no: LBG95031
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: DTS HD 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Super 35)
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Producers: Gerard Butler, Ed Cathell III, Antoine Fuqua, Mark Gill, Danny Lerner and Alan Siegel
Screenplay: Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt
Music: Trevor Morris
Cast:
Mike Banning: Gerard Butler
President Benjamin Asher: Aaron Eckhart
Forbes: Dylan McDermott
Kang: Rick Yune
Speaker Trumbull: Morgan Freeman
Secret Service Director Lynn Jacobs: Angela Bassett
Secretary of Defense Ruth McMillan: Melissa Leo
Connor: Finley Jacobsen
Leah: Radha Mitchell
Roma: Cole Hauser
Vice President Charlie Rodriguez: Phil Austin
Admiral Nathan Hoenig: James Ingersoll
Diaz: Freddy Bosche
O’Neil: Lance Broadway
Ray Monroe: Sean O’Bryan
Lee Tae-Woo: Keong Sim
Cho: Kevin Moon
Lim: Malana Lea
General Edward Clegg: Robert Forster
Yu: Sam Medina
Margaret Asher: Ashley Judd
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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