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.

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

Trailer: Tom Cruise *is* Wall-E in Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion!

It's no secret that I think Tron: Legacy is one of the worst would-be blockbusters in recent memory.  So the idea of another sci-fi would-be tentpole written and directed by Joseph Kosinski doesn't exactly fill me with glee, although the screenplay assist from William Monahan and Michael Ardnt should be noted.  But two things give me relative optimism.  First of all, Tom Cruise generally doesn't make out-and-out terrible films.  Oh sure Rock of Ages was among the worst films of his career, but he had a supporting role in that ensemble and everyone has to shoot an air ball sometime.  Second of all, this film is getting a full week of IMAX-only release, which I'd like to think Universal wouldn't be doing if the film wasn't going to get decent word-of-mouth ahead of its national April 19, 2013 release date.  As for the trailer, the first half amusingly resembles a live-action version of Wall-E before introducing Morgan Freeman and kicking into a somewhat more generic science-fiction action picture.  I'm betting that Sony wishes it had released its teaser for M. Night Shyamalan's somewhat similar sounding After Earth, although we'll see how the Will Smith sci-fi film compares when it teases next weekend with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  The cast is pretty solid, including the likes of Olga Kurylenko, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Andrea Riseborough, and Melissa Leo.  I wouldn't say it looks *good* so much as to admit that it doesn't look *bad*.  Anyway, as always, we'll see.  If you have any thoughts, share them below.

Scott Mendelson   

You know you were a Melissa Leo fan long before it was cool if...

...you can name the episodes these scenes are from. I thought it was a miracle back in 2008 when Melissa Leo became an Oscar nominee. Now, two years later, she's on the cusp of being an Oscar winner. As someone who believed that Homicide: Life of the Street died when she was forced off the show at the end of season five ('not pretty enough' and 'reports of your ex-husband John Heard stalking you is making bad press for us'), this is a genuine piece of vindication.

Scott Mendelson

Review: The Fighter (2010)

The Fighter
2010
116 minutes
Rated R

Opens in select theaters on Friday, December 10th

By Scott Mendelson

The Fighter is a solid example of the old cliché: "It's not what it's about, but how it's about it." The story is a relatively standard underdog sports fable, about a decent guy who attempts to get his shot at glory. The difference is that David O. Russell chooses to focus not on the triumphs and defeats of the sporting events, but on the surrounding family that proved to be Mickey Ward's greatest challenge. The film is based on a true story, and while not every story beat is factual, it is a fleshed-out portrait of a family so unwilling to admit failure that they stand in the way of anything resembling success. The unique viewpoint combined with a few terrific performances makes The Fighter a genuine credit to its genre.