Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

Clearly the Movie Gods are reasonably appeased. In the time since the burst hemorrhoid that was "A Good Day to Die Hard" sloshed it's reeking mass through theaters a little more than a month ago, I may or may not have offered up a blood sacrifice. I'm not saying I did, but I could have. Had I done so, it would have been in exchange for their mercy and benevolence by giving us a film that could, at least in some small way, compensate for the death of one of the greatest action franchises of all time.

I'm not saying that "Olympus Has Fallen" was of the quality of the classic "Die Hard" films, but you can at least imagine in your mind that this would have been an alright one had it stared Bruce Willis. It's like the chintzy coffee mug your work may give you in exchange for cleaning the bathroom floors with your face for 15 hours on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It's not really much of anything, and far too little too late after something nightmarishly horrible but hey, it's something.

So, to whatever dark deity accepted whatever sacrifice I may have hypothetically made, I offer my thanks. Be sure to leave your business card so I can properly worship you in the future. But next time do you think you could perhaps manage to do a little bit more than remake "Air Force One?" It's just going to make me want to watch "Air Force One" again. Not "Olympus Has Fallen." Hell, you even ripped off scenes like the "shooting the secretary" bit. I feel like I'm already watching "Air Force One," but without the awesomeness of Harrison Ford.

It is more subtle, though.

I realize that it may sound like I'm coming down too harshly on "Olympus Has Fallen." I don't want to make that impression, because this isn't a particularly bad movie by any means. As far as ridiculous, patriotic chest-thumping action movies go, it was fine. I've seen it done worse, although as one could infer from the previous paragraph, I've also seen it done better. At least I've seen it done with a far more memorable villain, which counts for a lot. But that's getting ahead of ourselves.

"Olympus Has Fallen" follows Mike (Gerard Butler), a former Secret Service agent who is forced to single-handedly save the President (Aaron Eckhart) and therefore the world after the White House comes under attack by North Korean insurgents. Of course there is hostage taking, executions, frantic conference calls as generals try to get some GODDAMN ANSWERS, torn American flags flapping in the wind, nuclear missiles, some one-liners, and all the other things we except from a movie like this involved. It's all pretty by the books, which doesn't make it bad, but as one could probably tell by looking at the poster, this most certainly is a movie that feels like it belongs in the late 90's.

"Happy birthday, Mr. President..."

And as much as that may sound like a slam, 90's action movies were awesome, so there's no issue there. By all means, remind me of something staring John Travolta or Christian Slater or Nicolas Cage. I will not complain. Hell, "Olympus Has Fallen" would actually make a decent double feature with something like "Under Siege" or maybe "Broken Arrow." Hell, even "Crimson Tide" would be a nice pairing.

Once the film gets going with the ridiculous plot, which gives "Red Dawn" a run for its money in terms of "That's dumb," bullets are flying and things are exploding with such rapidity that it almost overrides the fact that none of what we're seeing makes any sense or could feasibly happen. But really, in a movie like this when it's one man against an army of terrorists, there does come a certain point when logic does have to take a back seat to entertainment. After all, that's why we invented Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Just what part of "I'm going to shoot down this jet with a pistol" is problematic to you?

The action is acceptably frantic and reasonably well-shot, although it does suffer a bit from our old friend shakycam - The bane of the modern action film. And it may have just been the theater I saw it at (I'm looking at you, Emagine Canton) but the movie also seemed exceedingly dark, making it difficult to follow, particularly when about 3/4's of the movie takes place at dusk or night in a building with the power cut. So that was fun. But I can't deny that it was action packed, and I was never bored.

But for as much as the action counts, films like "Olympus Has Fallen" really depend on the charisma of their star, and while Gerard Butler isn't fantastic, he's not bad. He's just not that great. He certainly has the badass factor down pretty solidly, but for some reason the extra oomph to push him into full blown action movie star isn't there. Butler kind of falls in a weird place for me, being that he's like Jeremy Renner without the charm or Karl Urban without the acting chops. And though even a watered-down version of Renner or Urban is still good, after a while it does become a bit noticeable. And for me, I just start wishing that either one of those guys were in the movie instead.

I can't be the only one to be annoyed by his face, can I?

In a smart move, the film surrounds Butler with some heavyweights in the acting department, including not only Aaron Eckhart and Cole Hauser but also Morgen Freeman and even freaking Robert Forster. And while they barely (if ever) have any direct contact with Butler, he's talking to them for a good chunk of the film. Unfortunately we also have Angela Bassett sitting in the same room as Freeman and Forster sucking some of the talent out, but it still works as long as she's not talking. But one wonders what they're doing when they have not only a great actress like Ashley Judd in the film for just the first 15 minutes, but also Radha Mitchell, who has a do-nothing part we barely see her in. For shame.

I only have four complaints about "Olympus Has Fallen" that really irked me enough to really stand out. Everything else was an acceptable action movie pâté which was enough to satisfy my post-"Die Hard 5" malaise. Does that sound like a good time? Then I say go for it. You could do far worse. But me being me, I gotta vent. Here goes.

The first one is an admittedly minor complaint, made even less so by the fact that I got a pretty good laugh out of it. I found Melissa Leo's character, the Secretary of Defense, to be borderline unwatchable. I think they were trying to go for a tough Hillery Clinton type (unsurprisingly) but Leo plays it with such teeth-clenched, steel-jawed machismo that it's a bit much. But it gets ridiculous after she gets the patriotic snot beat out of her by the villain, and gets dragged away to what she assumes will be her death. As this is happening she starts belting out the Pledge of Allegiance through her broken mouth at the top of her lungs. While this is obviously meant to be stirring and resolute, I couldn't help myself and had to laugh, since due to her slurred and half-conscious speaking she sounded less like a patriot bravely meeting their end and more like Calamity Jane from "Deadwood" on another one of her bourbon fueled rampages.

"AH PLESH AHLEEJANCE TO DA FWAGADA YOONITID STaate...ah HELL! I pished mahself 'gain!"

The second issue I took was that for as much as this is supposed to be an "America! Yeah!" movie, it sure does love to make our army, air force, police force, NORAD, secret service, and overall level of preparedness look really, really bad. I know the whole point of the film is that Gerard Butler is forced to save the day, but there is a serious lack of any kind of general competence going on with everyone else. During the initial attack the only thing the men guarding the White House seem willing to do is discourage the enemy by dying at them.

You know, I'm no military strategist. I'm not a genius when it comes to tactics. The best battleplan I usually manage to come up with in D&D is "The fighter hits it with his sword." I won every battle in StarCraft by building 12 of the biggest air units available and pounding the other side into the dirt from above. But were I put in a situation where I had a large, massed group of enemies advancing towards me over open ground, and I was standing outside a heavily fortified building with numerous places to hide and to take cover, I can tell you without equivocation that my first instinct would NOT be: "Stand out in the open so the enemy can clearly see and shoot you."

"Quickly men! Stop the bullets with your bodies! Forth, Eorlingas!"

I know it's a convention of the action movie, wherein the bad guys need to appear as a viable threat, but for the love of Crom, the secret service looses roughly 80% of their strength before they even think that perhaps, just maybe it might be a good idea to duck behind a pillar or something or simply GO INSIDE. It doesn't make the terrorists look scary so much as it makes the Americans look really dumb.

Speaking of dumb, there's a pretty hackneyed twist in "Olympus Has Fallen" involving Dylan McDermott's secret service agent revealing himself as a traitor who was helping the North Koreans the whole time. And like usual in these films, his reasons for doing so are never explained more than a silly little "America is bad!" speech. It's just like Xander Berkley in, again, "Air Force One." And it was stupid then, too. I've never liked the plot device of a traitor in the midst of a ridiculously selective group of elite soldiers. I can never figure out how nobody figured him out, and why he's secret service anyway when he was capable of turning heel to the point of blowing up the United States. Which is the place where he lives. It's where he keeps all his stuff.

Oh geez, look out everyone. Bobby Donnell is locked and loaded.

And lastly the villain Kang, played by Rick Yune, just wasn't up to par when it comes to baddies in movies like this. This kind of movie needs a Gary Oldman. A Christopher Walken. A Dennis Hopper. I'm not saying that Rick Yune is bad, but he's not up to the task of being an intimidating villain, at least as the character is written. He's not memorable, he doesn't actually do much, and he's not any fun to watch.
  

 "Nice suit. John Philips, London. I have two myself."

He doesn't say anything clever. He's not intimidating physically aside from some random kung-fu he pulls out of nowhere, and he doesn't really do anything besides beating up an older women and a dude who is cuffed at the wrists. And his big fallback plan is to hide after sacrificing the rest of his men. Norman Stansfield he is not. He's just a weaselly scumbag who isn't any fun. That's honestly the biggest problem, as I am of the firm belief that the quality of an action movie is directly proportional to how entertaining the villain is.

Don't believe me? Think back on "Die Hard" and "Die Hard With A Vengeance." Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons were great, right? Now quick. Without checking IMDB, who was the villain in "Die Hard 2: Die Harder?" What about "Live Free or Die Hard?" How about "A Good Day to Die Hard?" What? You don't remember? Hmm. I do wonder how those movies stack up against the other two.

I rest my case.

Check out the trailer. What you see is pretty much exactly what you get.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Olympus Has Fallen" is alright. Just alright. I've seen way worse action films, and for a hybrid of "Die Hard" meets "24" meets paranoid right-wing gun nut conspiracy theory 'MERICA! propaganda, it's serviceable. I'm just surprised it wasn't made 15 years ago. Well, it was. Several times, but you know what I mean. It's worth a rental at least, if you're feeling the urge for bloodshed.

The Dark Knight (2008)

I remember that "The Dark Knight" was one of the first movies where I really stuck my head in the sand as far as The Hype Machine went. It had always been the case beforehand where I would do a lot of research about a movie I was excited about before it came out, simply out of a clinical, almost physical need to know more. But with "The Dark Knight" it was different.

"Batman Begins" had been so good, and I was so excited about its followup that the thought of having anything ruined for me, or developing any kind of preconceptions prior to seeing it seemed like a colossal mistake. All I knew is that Christopher Nolan hadn't let me down yet, so there was something to be said for that. There also seemed to be a dread seriousness surrounding "The Dark Knight," a mystique that promised to blow your mind, and any kind of spoiler would ruin its impact. This movie, from the first teaser trailer, just seemed like it knew how good it was going to be.

If there was one thing I was...shall we say...less than sold on about "The Dark Knight," it was Heath Ledger. When he had been cast as The Joker, I remember the initial reaction. Now, some of you may not remember this, especially in hindsight, but the reaction at first was not one of joy. Most people I talked to were at best a tad skeptical. I know I was. My first thought was "That pretty boy from "A Knight's Tale?" He's The Joker? That's weird."

There were three things that swayed me, however. The first was the fact I trusted Christopher Nolan. If he cast Heath, I surmised, there had to have been a good reason. The second reason was, oddly, from a movie that I didn't even like. When I saw "The Brothers Grimm" I had thoroughly not enjoyed myself. Well, perhaps that was because I was watching it in the theater literally 5 minutes after basically getting my heart broken, and I was bumming really bad. I'm not sure how much I would have liked it in any case, but that certainly didn't help.

However, the one thing I did note about "The Brothers Grimm" was that Heath Ledger had really transformed himself into a totally different character then I had seen him play before. I realized for the first time that this guy had tremendous versatility. I figured it was just as likely that he really would transform himself again for "The Dark Knight."

The final thing was a publicity shot of Heath in Joker makeup. The shear amount of menace and creepiness that Heath was able to portray just by standing there made it abundantly clear that this was not going to be like any Joker we'd ever seen before. As much as I loved Nicholson's version of The Joker, he was more funny than anything else. Caesar Romero goes without saying. Even Mark Hamill is funny in the role. But for the first time that I'd ever seen, Joker looked like they weren't going for laughs at all. This guy looked scary. I didn't care what else I saw, after that, I was convinced that this movie was going to be something else.

"See you in your nightmares, kids..."

So I kept my eyes and ears closed, my expectations hopeful and waited impatiently for summer and "The Dark Knight" to hit, and just took it on faith that Christopher Nolan knew what he was doing. Little did I know that "The Dark Knight" was going to end up being one of my favorite movies of all time.

When speaking of the cast, much of what was said previously concerning the other two films still stands. Everyone remained a rock star, which is unsurprising considering the unfathomable talent involved. Of special note of the returning cast is Michael Caine, who delivers an even better performance than he did in "Batman Begins." Again, this is unsurprising, given the fact that it's Michael Caine, but here Alfred is given some truly incredible dialogue, and his speeches became some of the most memorable moments in the film. And you just think about that for a minute. The butler's lines are more quotable than Batman's.

And speaking of Batman's quotes, am I the only person who never took issue with "The Bat Voice?" I mean, it made sense to me. Yeah, maybe Christian Bale took it a little over the top on occasion but remember, the dude is trying to mask his identity. Anyways, I never had a problem with it.

There were three additions to the cast, all of which were very welcome. Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent was stoic and heartbreakingly tragic as Gotham's best hope, and eventually great shame. What is fascinating about Harvey is that he is essentially what Batman would be if he didn't have to wear a mask. In some ways it makes Harvey more brave than Bruce, since he doesn't hide who he is. On the other hand, it makes him more foolish, since as we see at the end of the film, when you make powerful enemies, sometimes the people who suffer the most are your loved ones. That brings up an interesting question: Who is more heroic? Harvey or Bruce?

Oh yeah, Harvey. Looks like everything worked out great for everyone involved.

I was very happy about the recasting of Rachael Dawes. Although it sucks whenever an actor is replaced in a series, which really tends to remove me from a film, let us be honest. When it comes to acting, Maggie Gyllenhaal is Mike Tyson. Katie Holmes is more like Don Flamenco. While it would have been nice for Maggie to have been in it from the beginning, at least the character isn't a weak link in at least one of the movies, and I really liked her in this movie a lot. Although to be honest, I was a bit upset over their decision to put Maggie's hair up far too often in the film. As pretty as Maggie is, there are hairstyles that do not flatter certain face types, and Maggie can not do hair up. Not trying to sound like a pig, but it brings her from an 8 to a 5. But that's just me.

Of course there is one more to talk about, but it is even worth bringing up Heath Ledger at this point? It's pretty much an established fact that not only was it completely, wildly, impossibly off-base for anyone to have the slightest doubt about him playing The Joker, it may be that his version will become the definitive one whenever anyone talks about the character from now on. Personally, I've loved every version of The Joker I've seen, even Caesar Romero's campy, moustachioed one. They're all equally valid, because he's such an amazing character, and every actor who has played him has been fantastic in the role. And the great thing about Joker is that the fact that he has changed a great deal in various incarnations is almost in keeping with the character himself, being the avatar of chaos that he is.

There were so many things about Ledger's Joker that worked that it's almost difficult to put your finger on it. The role is just written so tightly, so intelligently, and so darkly hysterical while being played with such gusto and complete terrifying believability that he just becomes a living, breathing entity that oozes off the screen in all his greasy, dangerous, probably foul-smelling glory. It's one of those very special characters that really became bigger than the movie itself. It brings to mind other roles like Tyler Durden from "Fight Club," Jack Torrence from "The Shining," Alex DeLarge from "A Clockwork Orange," or Captain Jack Sparrow from the "Pirates of The Caribbean" series.

"When the chips are down, these uh, these "civilized people", they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve." #amazing dialogue

But of course, things happened the way they happened, which brings up the question that everyone was asking: Did Heath Ledger deserve the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor? Well, it's a very simple answer. Yes, he did. The problem isn't whether or not he deserved it, the problem is: would he have gotten it had he not died? I hate to say it, but I think the answer is "No." I'm sure he would have gotten nominated at least, but let's not kid ourselves. Comic book movies don't win Oscars. That's why they have pretentious schlock - so that they have movies to give awards to. I think it was just a special case that year where the academy was caught in a catch-22.

So yes, it was a mercy Oscar, especially since he was going up against sacred cows Josh Brolin and Philip Seymour Hoffman. But that doesn't mean he didn't deserve it.

The only cast member who bugged me was that SWAT member in the armored car carrying Harvey during the semi-truck scene. You know, the guy sitting in the passenger seat spewing nothing but really bad one-liners the entire time? I HATED that guy. He did absolutely bupkis except essentially narrate the scene for us as if we couldn't see what was happening on screen for ourselves. Words can't describe how angry that dude made me, since that scene was one of the highlights of the film, but every 25 seconds it cut back to him saying some stuff crap like "Now that's what I'm talking about!" SHUT. UP.

Anyways. Moving on. What surprises me, looking back on the Christopher Nolan Batman series, is how fast paced they are, especially with how long the run time is. No scene is given a chance to breathe, it's just *bam* next scene *bam* next scene *bam* without ever really slowing down at all. It really makes the films as an overall experience somewhat exhausting to watch, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just means that this trilogy, particularly "The Dark Knight" aren't movies to be watched casually. If you were to ask me to do a marathon of them, I wouldn't be sure if I wanted to do it in one sitting. That sounds like an emotionally wearisome experience.

Speaking of emotional turmoil, I think what stands out for me the most in "The Dark Knight," and probably the thing most people will remember, is how utterly dark it is. There are a whole lot of people being butchered in this movie by The Joker, often in shockingly brutal ways. But at the same time, as weird as it is to say, it's funny. And the emotional turmoil comes into play when you catch yourself laughing at the carnage.

I know that at more than a couple occasions I found myself slightly disturbed with the fact that Joker's violence put a smile on my face. I don't know if it was because the performance was so good, if it was legitimately funny, or if I'm just sick, but there it is. I don't think I'm alone though, because whenever I saw it in the theater, people were laughing hard. But it was always strangely intermingled with an odd kind of unease, like they felt guilty for laughing. It was a very unsettling experience.

Never, ever book The Joker to do magic tricks at your kid's party...

Of course dark is par for the course with this film, since it is the middle of a trilogy. Typically in a three movie structure the second part is the darkest. I believe it was George Lucas who said "In the first movie you introduce all the characters, in the second movie you put them in the absolute darkest pit you can find, somewhere they can never get out of, and in the last movie they get out." And while George isn't one to typically take advice from as far as movies go, that's a pretty accurate statement.

"You die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." That's the key phrase of "The Dark Knight," and it certainly leaves Bruce at his lowest point. Everything he's fought for, suffered for, and seen people die for is at sake in the aftermath of this madman who has taken Gotham and completely turned it on its head. And in an act of selflessness, he is forced to become the bad guy. And he's OK with that, as long as the city is safe.

That's why I've always loved Batman. More than any other superhero, he is the most human, and because of that is so much tougher and frankly more heroic than the rest, since he has no powers to fall back on. I can't remember seeing another comic book hero go through so much in a series of films as Batman has in the Christopher Nolan series, and I can't remember a hero making so many sacrifices. Most of the time heroes just end up saving the day. But with this Batman series, there aren't any easy answers, and sometimes the villains end up winning in the end. And dealing with the fallout of those real-life consequences like a true hero would have to do is what makes Batman a far more interesting character, and in my opinion, a better hero.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Dark Knight" is one of my favorite movies, and it's for sure one of the best comic movies I've ever seen. It's thrilling, intense, shocking, DARK as hell, and contains one of the most memorable movie villains of the past 20 years. It's hard to argue that it's the high point of the trilogy, much the same way "The Empire Strikes Back" was. Sometimes darker really is better. "The Dark Knight" gets my first "ESSENTIAL VIEWING" recommendation.