Olympus Has Fallen
starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Finley Jacobsen, Dylan McDermott, Rick Yune,
Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett and Melissa Leo
written by Crighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt
directed by Antoine Fuqua
Rating: ♦♦♦◊◊
This movie really wasn’t that good. But it was fun, so I give it three stars. It is called “White House Down” in Japanese. The South Korean Prime Minister is in Washington, D.C. - inside the White House - conferring with the American President during a period of especially heightened, tense relations with North Korea. During the meeting North Korean special forces launch an aerial attack against the White House with a heavily armed C-130 propeller plane. Where they got it and where it came from are never explained. The aerial attack is quickly followed by a well planned and tightly executed ground assault. It was so neat that at the end of the movie I returned to the start to watch it again. Lots of shooting. Of course, the North Korean forces are framed in the story as “terrorists.” Several of the South Korean Prime Minister’s party turn out to be Northern agents, and Dylan McDermott plays a traitorous Secret Service agent who somehow assisted them. It is never explained how. I counted three times in the movie when people are killed by being stabbed directly in the top of the head with a knife. It’s as if the director, Antoine Fuqua, temporarily had a thing for this kind of killing and so deliberately used it more than once. It was gross. I`d rather be shot. "Olympus" is the Secret Service code name for the White House itself. Gerard Butler plays former Secret Service agent Mike Banning who by chance gets trapped inside the White House after it has fallen into terrorist hands. Using his insider knowledge of the building`s architecture and defenses he works with the Pentagon to kill the terrorists and rescue the President. The White House is the most heavily defended building on earth so it was neat to see even a fictional picture of an attack on it, something which no one has done since 1812 when the British burned it during the War of 1812.