Olympus Has Fallen - 4 stars out of 10

Olympus Has Fallen - 4 stars out of 10

Explosions fill the screen as Gerard Butler tortures and kills a bunch of people in the bloodiest manner possible.  Believe it or not, this is not a review for "Law Abiding Citizen."  There was a lot of potential for cool action sequences and special effects as Washington D.C. gets destroyed by terrorists, but the writers tried to do too much with the story once the terrorists invaded the White House.  There were a few amazing moments of high anxiety as hostages are killed and the writers really had my emotions completely invested into this plot.  The concept of taking hostages in the White House to force an end to the Korean civil war was actually pretty clever – why did we need more than that?  Unfortunately, as the hostages seem hopeless and we are relying on our kick-butt hero to save them, the story goes beyond its limits by adding in the terrorist’s attempt to blow up all of the nuclear missiles in their silos and turn the United States into a nuclear wasteland.  This is a clear case of a “bigger is better” attitude rather than relying on character development and plot to drive the film to an exciting conclusion.  In fact, I did not feel an attachment to a single character in this film.  It lacks an amazing villain like Die Hard III and things just fall flat.  I would say that the plot of the White House being attacked was an original one for this summer but... "White House Down"...  The acting is good for an action movie with Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, and Melissa Leo topping the cast list.  In fact, there wasn’t nearly enough Ashley Judd or Morgan Freeman.  You can never have enough Morgan Freeman, but he was underutilized in this film. These big names gave me the hopes that this would be more of a thriller (a la "Runaway Jury") but it is pure action and these quality actors actually lower their performances accordingly.  Butler was pretty cool but again, I would’ve much rather watched him rescue hostages than implausibly save the country from being blown up by nuclear missiles with two seconds to spare. In the end, there are just too many women being beaten and execution-style murders.  I would give the CGI an 85% and, while it's cool to see a lot of our landmarks blown up, Hollywood needs to find a new strategy to engage our emotions.