Olympus Has Fallen Movie Review Review: Olympus Has Fallen Rating: 2 out of 5 stars 8 votes Action/Adventure, Thriller Running time Director Antoine Fuqua Screen writer Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedikt Actors Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Dylan McDermott, Melissa Leo, Angela Bassett, Radha Mitchell, Ashley Judd OFLC rating Year Language English Don't tell anyone, but all you need to overrun the White House and take the president of the US hostage is a converted C-130 transport plane, 40 commandos, some garbage trucks and an inside man or two. If that sounds a little easy, then new action film Olympus Has Fallen would also have you believe a single belligerent Secret Service agent can save the day. The ultimate home invasion becomes a predictable mix of carnage and destruction. That dedicated and somewhat impervious man of action is Gerard Butler's Mike Banning, a flinty fellow who says things like "newsflash, asshole" and generally proves he is fluent in McClane, the language introduced by five Die Hard movies. That franchise's original 1988 outing remains an influential work, creating a now-familiar template of a crisis in a contained space and a lone operative wreaking havoc. Destruction: The White House suffers in Olympus Has Fallen. Banning is first seen as the head of the presidential security detail, which apparently makes him a well-armed friend of President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and his wife, Margaret (Ashley Judd), as well as an avuncular presence to First Son Connor (Finley Jacobsen). Well, at least, that is until a car accident at Camp David forces Banning to choose between saving the man he is sworn to protect or the President's wife. Banning does his job, and is banished by the grieving President. He winds up in the Treasury building, at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, another in a long line of gruff, emotionally withered Secret Service veterans. Like Clint Eastwood's Frank Horrigan from In the Line of Fire or Kevin Costner's Frank Farmer in The Bodyguard, Banning has been sapped by the demands of his job. Eighteen months after the loss of Margaret Asher he's still refusing therapy and disappointing his wife, Leah (Radha Mitchell). The sapping demands of life as a potential human shield are among several interesting topics Olympus Has Fallen toys with, as is the notion of what it is to protect someone you don't actually like. It doesn't pursue either, instead focusing on the deeper philosophical question of how much blood splatter a close-range bullet to the head leaves (hint: a lot!). Banning is the sole law-enforcement officer in all of Washington DC to get inside the White House after the ground assault by fanatical North Korean agents commences, and director Antoine Fuqua stages the sequence with tumultuous bravado. The problem is that once it's over, and Banning is taking down the enemy one by one in the darkened hallways, the film rarely rises above the workmanlike. The North Koreans, commanded by the country's most handsome man, Rick Yune's Kang (no offence, Kim Jong-un), intend to reacquire South Korea and cripple the US's nuclear arsenal. Thankfully, Morgan Freeman is on hand, as Speaker of the House and acting leader Allan Trumbull, to bestow a measure of moral authority to the Pentagon command centre. His calm declamations are as predictable as the revelation that Banning is "ex-Special Forces"; heaven forbid that a regular army veteran should have thrust on to him the responsibility of shooting and stabbing a lot of North Koreans. The film is casually violent, with scrapings of wit. Butler is Scottish, and in the occasional character there are flashes of something unpredictable to the actor's presence. This film is not one of those roles. The actor grits his teeth and strides forth, an approach put in a better light by Eckhart's overwrought attempts to show his politician is a man of action despite being tied up for most of the movie. The film's timing is impressive, in that 18 months of conception and production have culminated just as North Korea engages in sabre-rattling. But the rest of the world barely exists in this film, which Fuqua and the writers ladle with jingoistic patriotism. The villainous North Koreans throw a bullet-ridden American flag from the White House roof, and the only surprise is that Banning doesn't do the same to one of them. Olympus Has Fallen is short on the unexpected and its ludicrousness is perfunctory instead of entertaining. Fuqua, best known for 2001's Training Day, doesn't seem to have a great deal of faith in the audience. Despite the historic setting, virtually the only real US president referenced is Abraham Lincoln, with a bust of his head proving to be a handy weapon. But at one point Banning uses a secret passage beside a bed to dodge his pursuers, so you can probably assume he was in the Clinton bedroom.