On the "morality" of cinematic action-movie massacres...

There is a moment at around the twenty minute mark of Olympus Has Fallen where a giant airplane piloted by evil North Koreans shoot down an American fighter jet which then crashes not in the water or in an empty parking lot, but smack-dab into a suburban home.  Considering the time of day the scene takes place, there's a pretty good chance whomever lived there was probably home at the time and was instantly burned to a crisp.  That moment would have jolting enough, but the attack sequence that kicks off the plot goes on for a good twenty minutes, offering countless innocent bystanders being bloodily gunned down in the streets, along with others being crushed by falling monuments and blown up by various explosions set off during the White House siege.  This isn't even counting the bazillion Secret Service agents who are slaughtered in the attack sequence, including a moment where enemy soldiers walk around the White House plugging wounded agents in the head (onscreen) for the crime of not being quite dead yet. Half of me was rather impressed by the rather horrifying onscreen body count.  Half of me was debating whether to be offended or bothered by it.

Weekend Box Office (03/24/13) part II: Olympus Has Fallen rises while Admission fails and Spring Breakers amuses.

No matter what you think of the film, the $30.5 million debut of Olympus Has Fallen this weekend is very good news for those who want their action films to be R-rated.  With Arnold, Sly, and Jason all flaming out and only the terrible A Good Day To Die Hard opening well, we needed an original R-rated action film to reestablish their viability. I may be forgetting something, but this this is among the top R-rated action openings for a non-sequel since the $50 million debut of Wanted back in June 2008 (possible exceptions: Inglorious Basterds which opened with $37 million in August 2009 and the sci-fi drama The Book of Eli which debuted with $32 million in early 2010).  The film is easily Film District's biggest debut ever, with a solid A- from Cinemascore and a strong 3.0x weekend multiplier.  The concept is a pretty obvious winner, so obvious that I'm amazed it hasn't been done before (yet it's only the first of two, with White House Down opening this summer).  The obvious appeal of the narrative plus a game cast of recognizable players (Gerald Butler, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo, etc.).  It'll take a hit next weekend from G.I. Joe: Retaliation, but it should recover due to the fact that it's one of the most insanely violent R-rated action films this side of Starship Troopers and thus will provide the kind of carnage that a PG-13 G.I. Joe movie cannot.  Hopefully this finally gets the undervalued Antoine Fuqua onto the various 'hot lists' next time a studio goes hunting for a tent pole director.

Review: Olympus Has Fallen (2013) is violent and stupid, a 'direct-to-VHS Die Hard rip-off' on steroids.

Olympus Has Fallen
2013
120 minutes
Rated R

by Scott Mendelson

If taken at face-value, Antoine Fuqua's Olympus Has Fallen is pretty much morally indefensible. Written by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, the film offers a level of jingoistic fear-mongering  the likes of which are more commonly associated with a 1980s Chuck Norris vehicle and/or the likes of Cobra.  It is astonishingly violent yet acts as if the safety of a single person is all that necessitates a happy ending.  While the slightly similar 'president in peril' epic Air Force One at least implicitly asked what cost in lives should be spent to preserve the life on a man who happens to hold a certain elected office, Olympus Has Fallen has no such weighty ideas on its mind.  It is not so much a Die Hard rip-off but a high-budget ($80 million) ode to the flurry of cheapie straight-to-VHS knock-offs that flourished in the late 1990s, complete with simplistic plotting and implausible levels of violence.  It isn't terribly smart and it peaks in the first act, but damned if I didn't enjoy the picture nonetheless.

Die Hard's oddest legacy: cheap action films...

This July will be Die Hard's 25th anniversary and much has already been written about its impact in Hollywood and its place among the top American action films of its time.  What sticks out 25 years later is not just that it made stars out of its leads (Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman) or revitalized the modern-day/non-science fiction action picture on the cusp of modern special effects advances, or that its character archetypes (regular guy hero versus larger-than-life "sophisticated" villain) basically changed the face of action cinema.  What sticks out is that Die Hard is the rare movie that basically created an entire sub-genre.  Call it "Die Hard on a/Die Hard in a", but Die Hard created a blue-print for an entire generation of cheap direct-to-video or direct-to-cable action pictures.  Using the Die Hard template, anyone could make an action picture with minimal expense.

Trailer: Olympus Has Fallen looks like a terrific old-school action blast with a cast to die for.

Good lord this looks like great fun!  If this is supposed to be the "B-Level" movie about terrorists taking over the White House (proceeding the Channing Tatum/Jamie Foxx action thriller White House Down), then I can't imagine how good that Roland Emmerich action picture might be.  Antoine Fuqua is a generally solid action filmmaker and the cast (Gerald Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Dylan McDermott Ashley Judd, Melissa Leo, Cole Hauser, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, and Rick Yune) is to die for.  Yes it's mired in cliche, but tell me you didn't grin a little bit when you correctly predicted Butler gravely intoning "I'm the best hope you have!".  It's a little odd to have Ashley Judd for such a small part, unless A) she's still alive in the end or B) she wanted a paycheck to finance her probable US Senate run in 2014.  Either way, this looks like an old-school action blast from the proverbial past, a gee-wiz Die Hard/Air Force One hybrid that is hopefully high-energy, production value-rich, genre fun.  Olympus Has Fallen opens on March 22, 2013.  Come what may, it looks like we may get at least one good Die Hard movie this spring after all.  This one was barely on my radar and now it's among my top must-sees of the season.  Nice work, Film District marketing!

Scott Mendelson