According to moviebodycounts.com, (yes, all sorts of information is available on the Internet), Gerard Butler set some sort of top 5 record with his movie “300” and I think he easily breaks that record with a body count of 600 people just in the first half hour of “Olympus Has Fallen”!
As always one has to check logic at the door when approaching an action film such as this without even talking about a secret service agent, Mike Banning, (Butler) working with the president (Aaron Eckhart) and his wife (Ashley Judd) on Christmas Eve wearing a 5 o’clock shadow! “Olympus Has Fallen” follows the template of hundreds of movies that have come before where one man can fight, kill and escape one threat after another but not one man can escape him.
The story starts with Banning feeling he has made a mistake and then jumps ahead 18 months to present day. The president, and some of his staff, including secretary of defense McMillan (Melissa Leo) and vice-president Charlie Rodriguez (Phil Austin) are held hostage by a North Korean terrorist, Yang (Rick Yune), making Morgan Freeman the acting president who works with secret service director Lynn Jacobs (Angela Bassett). Connor (Finley Jacobsen) as the president’s son, Dylan McDermott as a friend of Banning’s and Radha Mitchell as the latter’s wife are all important parts of the movie but it is Gerard Butler who is the man in the white hat, who uses the ‘F’ word quite a bit, who comes to the rescue of all and the world. In no way is that a spoiler as you know from the beginning it is not who but you have to find out how the hero will save the day.
Director Antoine Fuqua, working with a script by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, plus an excellent CGI crew and a production crew that constructs special, amazing sets, keeps the film going at a fast, sometimes funny pace, defying you to keep an accurate body count.
“Olympus Has Fallen” is a fun, shake your head, how did they do that, just sit back and relax thriller of a movie with a music soundtrack that, at times, is too loud.
