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.

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

Well good freaking job, movie industry. You succeeded. You made a worse movie than "Live Free or Die Hard." I'm so mad about this that I'm not even giving it the dignity or the brain power of my usual nonsensical lead-in. This is straight to the carotid artery, cut your throat and leave to you bleed out behind a Pump 'n Munch gas station to the point here. Nothing subtle or cheeky this time. "A Good Day to Die Hard" ate. And it ate the whole thing.

I love the "Die Hard" series. I really do. "Die Hard" is one of the best action movies of not only the 80's but ever, and you can replace that statement with "Die Hard With A Vengeance" and "90's" and say the same thing. "Die Hard 2" isn't that great, but that's only when compared to the other two. It's still a rock-solid action flick. The biggest problem with "Live Free or Die Hard" was that it was PG-13, although the fact that it was also painfully average didn't help matters. But I'd still rather watch PG-13 John McClane before most other action heroes.

For that reason it's so unfathomably irritating for me to have to sit and watch one of the greatest action heroes of all time (not only McClane but Bruce Willis) be subjected to this uninspired, confusing, boring, horrendously shot and brutally un-fun shlock. This isn't only by FAR the worst entry in the series, this is one of the most unwatchably bad action movies I've ever seen. "Live Free or Die Hard" is like "Aliens" next to this.

"Come out to the coast, we'll get together, make another "Die Hard," have a few laughs."

"AGTDH" is directed by John Moore, the guy whose films include "Max Payne" and the remakes of "Flight of The Phoenix" and "The Omen," so right off the bat you know what kind of quality we're looking at. And seeing his IMDB page I realize that apart from his short films I've seen his complete body of work. That makes me sad. This guy is a hack to rival Michael Bay, although I blame the films he chooses to direct more than his skills at film making. Thankfully he only makes a movie roughly once every 3 years.

What. The hell. Do you have. To SMILE about?

This is going to be a tough one to talk about. The reason for that has much to do with the fact that the story was a huge mess that was impossible to make any sense of, and despite running it over and over in my brain for days it's still kind of a jumbled haze of shaky-cam, explosions, bickering, stupid characters, bad acting, double crosses and odd incest subtext.

The beginning finds McClane's son, Jack (Jai Courtney) in a Russian jail after shooting a man in a nightclub, seemingly under the orders of Komarov, a Russian...business man I guess. It's a special film that has it so that you're not quite sure what the bad guys even do. Anyway, Komarov is already in jail for doing something. It's implied that his former partner, Chagarin, set him up. Komarov is set to go to trial for whatever he was supposed to have done, and Chagarin says he'll drop the case if he gets "the files." More on that magical MacGuffin later.

John McClane finds out about Jack and heads to Moscow to...do something about all this I guess. When Chagarin's men set off a bomb in the courthouse, springing Jack, who absconds with Komarov, we find out that Jack is actually working for the CIA, and shot the guy to get in the same courtroom as Komarov in order to nab him during the escape and get "the files." After McClane gets in the way of Jack's escape, a high-speed, high collateral damage pursuit with Chagarin's men ensues, and McClane, Jack and Komarov eventually get away. However, for some unexplained reason, the CIA cancels his extraction due to Jack taking too long. I never saw any kind of reason they couldn't wait another 3 minutes, as we never knew what the extraction plan was to begin with, but the movie doesn't feel it needs to explain itself to the likes of you. This is a trend.

Evidently, changing clothes in order to do some blow-up-some-government-installation terrorist work means that it's necessary to look and act like you're two seconds away from doing a porno. (facepalm)

That brings up the first big thing I don't understand. Why on earth did the CIA have to have Jack in the courtroom with Komarov? That would imply that the CIA knew beforehand that Chagarin was going to blow up the courthouse in down to the last minute detail, which leads to all kinds of questions regarding the ethics of information exchange between two allied countries. And why is he even there anyway? He was arrested for shooting someone. Why would he be at Komarov's trial? Those are two separate cases.

And here's the best part of the whole stupid story: We find out 50 minutes in that Komarov is the main bad guy of the movie, and he's been playing Chagarin the whole time. Not only is it generally a really bad idea to not unveil your villain until the film is more than half over, but that also makes the entire blow-up-the-courthouse segment completely absurd. If he was fully capable of rigging this elaborate ruse full of double-double crosses capable of duping the Russian government and the CIA, all orchestrated from behind bars mind you, and then just kills Chagarin anyway with a phone call and impossibly well-coordinated dramatic timing, why didn't he just spring himself from jail?

That also brings up the issue of "the files." Well, as we find out, those "files" that both the CIA and Chagarin are after don't exist. Turns out Komarov was making it up. I have no idea what they were supposed to be, and apparently nobody else including Jack, Chagarin, or the CIA knew either. They just knew they wanted them. So great. The CIA is like a little kid throwing a tantrum at a Toys 'R Us. Fantastic.

Of course this is all speculation on my part since I honestly had no idea what was going on while I was watching "AGDTDH." This is after days of trying to sort it out in my head. And I've still got nothing. It's such an overly complicated plot for what ends up being a completely brain dead fart of nonsense, shell casings and shattered glass thrown at the screen. The only two things I can be sure of is that a) It's stupid and b) They wind up in Chernobyl. Yes, that Chernobyl. Because the incident at Chernobyl was actually caused by Komarov and Chagarin's illegal uranium smuggling as opposed to a horrific accident which caused untold death and suffering. Are we dumber yet?

Okay, NOW we're dumber. Hanging off a truck that's hanging off a helicopter. That did it.

I don't even feel like continuing trying to explain the plot. You read that rambling mess. I guarantee you that was more cohesive than the movie itself. A helicopter blows up, the bad guy dies, McClane says "Yippee Ki-Yay" like we give a crap at this point, and blissfully the movie ends. I don't care anymore.

You know, this could have been anyone. It didn't have to be John McClane. In fact, McClane is really just along for the ride, and if anything he's just kind of there to get in the way most of the time. Every once in a while he'll have to save Jack since Jack is a failure of mythic proportions and can't do anything right yet continuously insults McClane over how big of a loser he is, even though McClane is always spot-on in his assessment despite literally having just shown up, immediately making him a better spy than Jack without having any training. So that says a lot about Jack right there, doesn't it? What a great character.

I couldn't stand Jai Courtney in this movie. I've heard he's really good in other things, but this is the first thing I've seen him in, and though it's probably unfair to judge him based on a hemorrhoid like this I'm perfectly okay with saying that he was absolutely terrible. He spends the entirety of the movie complaining and bickering with Bruce Willis like a snot-nosed little brat who has been forced to go to Little League when he doesn't want to. The ENTIRETY of the movie. And then Bruce Willis snarks back to him. This is what every single exchange of dialogue they have boils down to:

Jack: "I had an unpleasant upbringing because you're a bad father."
McClane: "I acknowledge this, but you're an asshole."

Sound like fun? Imagine that for an hour and a half straight, followed by an out of nowhere "I love you, dad" because THAT was certainly earned after nothing but hate for the whole affair leading up to it. Maybe all it took was McClane saving his stupid ass like 5 times. What a guy.

He'd say something snarky about his dad to that hose if he thought it would listen.

And let's not forget the villains. It's a pretty obvious fact at this point that the quality of a "Die Hard" movie is directly proportional to the villain it has. The first and third had Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons respectively, and those movies were the best of the series by far. And here with Komarov, we have some vague Franco Nero looking guy who looks more like someone's dad or a guy working at a liquor store who would card you and then give you crap because he doesn't believe it's you on your license because you've shaved your beard since getting the picture taken and all you want is your freaking Budweiser and to go home. I'm not scared.

Then we've got his daughter, Irina (Yuliya Snigir) who I would call the worst villain in any "Die Hard" movie ever with one exception. She has that tired schtick were she acts all innocent at first and then turns into a complete psychopathic freak. I think I know where they were trying to go with her, in that they really wanted Katya from "Die Hard With A Vengeance," but obviously they couldn't bring that character back. So they probably just sat the actress down, had her watch that movie and said "Okay, just do that. Only make it so that you're not intimidating in the least, and that you really, really want to have sex with your dad. Make it obvious."

I mentioned the one exception. There was one guy in this movie who is, BY FAR, not only the absolute nadir of "Die Hard" villainy, but potentially the worst villain I have ever seen. I'm thinking really hard about this, and I'm drawing a blank on who was worse than this guy.

Seriously, are you supposed to be Clive Owen from "Shoot 'Em Up?" What's with the freaking carrot?

I have absolutely no idea what this guy's deal was. His name is Alik. He's played by Rasha Bukvic. He's this hammy, tap-dancing, cliche "Amereekan peeg dogs" speech spouting, carrot eating, Clive Owen looking, I'm-trying-so-hard-to-be-Christopher-Walken piece of insufferable garbage who was so bad at being a bad guy that the film which was already ground to a halt started going backwards every time he showed up. He's built up for a good chunk of the movie to be the big bad, only to do a stupid little dance routine to try and scare (?) McClane and Jack, although it's clear that even with guns to their heads, the McClane boys are taking this guy about as seriously as Yakov Smirnoff. And he doesn't care. And then later, blissfully, out of nowhere he gets shot in the head. That was the best part of the movie. Shame it took them over an hour into it to put one in his dome.

And how is Bruce Willis during all this? He looks tired. He looks like he doesn't want to be there. It looks like he's sad filming this. There is so little fun in what he's doing that it's really depressing. There is no John McClane in this movie. Even as the overpowered superhero that the series has made him into from being just an ordinary schmuck trapped in bad situations (which was the reason we loved him, by the way), it's still a joyless, irritated performance. So there you go. Why is he even there? And why is this called "Die Hard" again?

And why is ordinary every-man John McClane completely impervious to injury now? Remember back when he had to walk over broken glass without shoes and spent the rest of the movie limping? Now he literally swims in broken glass. And he's FINE. When did he become The freaking Wolverine?

And evidently, an 8 inch piece of rebar sticking out of you isn't a big deal and doesn't even require dressing the wound. Good to know.

I haven't even mentioned the action yet, what little of it I could actually make out. The shaky camera laden action scenes are about the only things more indecipherable than the plot. It doesn't matter how many cars you wreck in a chase scene, or how much totally unnecessary collateral damage you cause if there isn't a shot during it that lasts more than a third of a second, making it totally impossible to follow. So there you go. Where the hell is John McTiernan when you need him?

And since when does John McClane not give a crap about innocent bystanders? The amount of people that he probably killed in that car chase was a least in the dozens. And he doesn't care. Was it because they were Russian? He may be overseas, but he's still a police officer, for crying out loud. Can we at least get his character right? If I may break out a very nerdy but useful tool with the classic D&D Character Alignment, McClane is Chaotic Good. Not Chaotic Neutral, okay? There's a big freaking difference. Mostly in the fact that's he's NOT cool with killing random pedestrians who get in his way. Have the writers ever even SEEN a "Die Hard" movie before?

 Well, obviously they have. John McClane is wearing plaid. Clearly that's a callback to "Die Hard 2."

I'm so tired. So very tired. This movie makes me sad just thinking about it, and writing this entry has taken a lot out of me. I feel like I need to lay down or something. Just shut myself up in my room and stare at the wall for about 20 minutes in complete silence just to reset my brain. They killed "Die Hard." It's done. There's no coming back from this. I'd never suspect in a million years that one of the worst action movies I've ever seen was from one of my favorite movie franchises.

A fly in the ointment. A monkey in the wrench. And most certainly a pain in the ass.

The trailer had the audacity to make this movie look good. LIES.

THE BOTTOM LINE - Sadness. Utter, black, total sadness and shock. Watching "A Good Day to Die Hard" is akin to watching your dog burn to death in front of you. Something I love is now defiled, and I don't want to talk about it anymore.