Olympus Has Fallen

Guns. Bombs. Blood. A bad-ass Gerard Butler. This is a guys movie, plain and simple. It's got a thin story, one that obviously has nukes somewhere in the mix. It's got big fires and special effects eye candy as far as the eye can see. Ladies, might as well skip this one. Unless you're an action girl. In which case, Hi, I'm Tom. How are you?

But more importantly, this film actually has a bit of appreciation that can go for it. First of all, it has one heck of a dynamite tone. It's pretty dark (tonally and physically), but it never actually hurts to watch or becomes preachy. It never manages to get to the point that it takes itself too seriously. Perhaps this is because of its lack of tongue-in-cheek action from the start. It's fun, but it's all placed pretty strongly in reality. It was nice to see a character who was shot once fall the ground, not riddled with bullets before damning the villains with his last breath before being shot in the head. If someone was shot, they went down. And that's always a relief to see considering the obnoxious trend of bullets doing nothing until the script says it's okay.

The story isn't exactly dynamite (who really expected it to be), but I have to admit I was pretty engrossed. I even felt suspense for a bit of it. Was he going to give up information they so desperately needed? Was acting-President Morgan Freeman making the right decisions? Would Melissa Leo ever stop overacting and stop the unintentional laughter from the audience? You'll just have to keep watching to see.

The action scenes in this is where the film really shined. It didn't take advantage of awful jump cuts or shaky cam to hide how poorly executed the action scenes were. Rather, the shots were nice and connected, and you could very plainly see how Butler managed to take down a bunch of bad guys quickly and effectively. Plus, there's the added bonus of me personally never seeing a movie with the White House being attacked in such a way. It worked, pretty darn well.

I guess the best way of summing this up is, White House Down (starring Channing Tatum), your mediocre film idea already has a decent amount to live up to. Good luck.

Score - 3/5