Olympus Has Fallen (2013) vs. White House Down (2013)

by ScottDS

Per Wikipedia, synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. The concept was first described by Carl Jung in the 1920s. The concept would also explain why we seem to get two movies with similar subject matter every other year. In 2013, it was “Die Hard in the White House.” Neither Olympus Has Fallen nor White House Down are what you’d call great, but one is just a tad more entertaining than the other.

Olympus Has Fallen: Former U.S. Army Ranger Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) has been re-assigned from the Secret Service to the Treasury Department after saving the President’s life during a car accident... and failing to save the First Lady. At the same time, the White House is hosting a delegation from South Korea. All hell breaks loose when North Korean guerrilla forces open fire on Washington D.C. and eventually take the White House. President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) is held hostage along with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Banning leaves his office and shoots his way inside the White House. We find out that Korean terrorist Kang (Rick Yune) is behind the attack: he demands all U.S. troops be removed from the Korean peninsula, and he wants the access codes to Cerberus, a top-secret missile system. He intends to explode all of our nuclear missiles in their silos, which would turn the U.S. into a nuclear wasteland. Long story short, Banning manages to take out most of Kang’s men, stab Kang in the head, save the president, and stop the Cerberus countdown. Like I said, it’s all very Die Hard. [smile]

Look, I had pretty low expectations and the movie met them. It’s the very definition of “Sunday afternoon on TBS with nothing to do.” There’s nothing original about it but it does what it does reasonably well. Gerard Butler plays Banning and you know what? I’d follow him to the Gates of Hell. He’s no Brando but he’s fun to watch and seems like a cool guy in real life. The rest of the cast is over-qualified to say the least. Eckhart is believable as the commander-in-chief. Morgan Freeman plays Speaker of the House Trumbull who becomes acting president: at times, it seems like he’d rather be elsewhere. Robert Forster plays General Clegg, the Paul Gleeson/William Atherton/dick role, whose sole purpose is to be a thorn in our hero’s side. Angela Bassett plays the Director of the Secret Service: she makes it all look easy and there’s nothing to her performance that says, “Paycheck!” Melissa Leo is way, way, way too good to be in this movie! She plays the Secretary of Defense and her heartfelt cries of “Oh, Mr. President!” almost tug at the heartstrings. Rick Yune (Die Another Day) does a serviceable job as Kang – he doesn’t reinvent the wheel but you sure want to see Banning kill him in the end!

Just like in Air Force One, we get a traitorous Secret Service agent: Forbes, played by Dylan McDermott (Dermot Mulroney is a different person!). Yeah, he’s all friendly at the beginning, but when asked why he betrays his president and his country, his only answer is, “Globalization! Wall Street!” That’s it – take it for whatever it’s worth. Banning gives Forbes a chance to redeem himself later on but it comes across as a little too convenient. And the President has a son, Connor (Finley Jacobsen), who actually isn’t too annoying. I was afraid they were gonna do the “Bad guy holds kid hostage” thing but Banning helps the kid escape… halfway through the film! I have to applaud screenwriters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt (this is their first credit) for not doing the obvious... this one time. [smile] And it’s through Connor that we get necessary exposition about the White House and where certain rooms are, thanks to Banning playfully quizzing him during the opening. Look, exposition is a clunky thing – the best you can do is try to hide it. The last thing you want to do is open a scene with, “As you know…”

Training Day’s Antoine Fuqua directs and, thankfully, most of the action is easy to follow. I know I’ve said it before but geography is important in movies like this. Too many filmmakers nowadays decide to get inside their characters’ heads: “Our hero doesn’t know what’s going on and the camerawork should reflect that chaos!” Organized chaos is one thing but it takes real skill to plot out an action scene. Simply shaking the camera to create tension gets old after a while. Now we even have movies that employ shaky-cam during otherwise mundane dialogue scenes! Most of the White House scenes take place in dim interiors (the power is cut off). It’s off-putting at first, but not so dark that you can’t see what’s going on. And it’s always interesting to see how filmmakers conceive certain locations: another bunker, another command center, ad infinitum. I doubt the computer interfaces in the real White House are as fancy as the ones seen here! Not a criticism, just an observation. In movies, it’s all about instant recognition.

While there is almost a vintage 80s vibe to the movie (certainly more so than the latest Die Hard sequel), there’s one aspect to the film that identifies it as a product of the 20-teens. That is the CGI, most of which isn’t very good… but that’s what happens when you outsource your effects work to a former Soviet Bloc country! The takeover of the White House is quite exciting and quite violent, with the guerrillas mowing down people left and right, and destroying the Washington Monument in the process. It’s all CGI – some of it looks okay but most of it looks obviously fake, including the blood. And there’s a lot of blood in this movie, along with gunshots, stabbings, the works. I’m not saying this is always necessary but in a world of too many sanitized PG-13 action movies (that seem to feature everything but blood), it’s nice to go balls to the wall sometimes. Speaking of balls, this leads me to…

White House Down. I must confess that I was pre-disposed to hate this movie. It was directed by Roland Emmerich and while I’m still a fan of Independence Day, Emmerich also directed 2012, which was pure torture. I’m happy to say that this film wasn’t as offensive or sadistic as that piece of crap – it’s just plain stupid. And it features all the clichés of Olympus Has Fallen, including a traitorous Secret Service agent, a kid in distress, an over-qualified supporting cast, and bad CGI… all for twice the cost! (Seriously, while there are exceptions, it's getting harder to tell where the money is going whenever one of these big films is released!)

John Cale (Channing Tatum) is a Capitol Police officer assigned to Speaker of the House Raphelson. Cale doesn’t get along well with his daughter Emily (Joey King) but she’s excited when they get to go to the White House. Cale has a job interview with Secret Service agent Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal)… which doesn’t go well. While on a tour of the White House, a man detonates a bomb in the Capitol Building and a team of mercenaries starts killing people left and right and takes the tour group hostage. This movie is even more Die Hard than the former film, with a bit of The Rock thrown in for good measure. This time, the Secret Service agent is Martin Walker (James Woods, naturally), who: a.) demands $400 million as ransom for the hostages, b.) wants to avenge the death of his son who was killed in action, and c.) wants to restore America’s place in the world by nuking the Middle East. Long story short, Cale saves the president (more on him soon), saves his daughter, and yeah, I’m done now.

To the film’s credit, Woods (who is an excellent actor) gives his character a little more emotion and pathos than we usually get in these movies. And there’s even a second traitor in the film: the aforementioned Speaker of the House (played by another excellent actor, Richard Jenkins), who wants a war in the Middle East which will make his defense contractor friends happy. I like Channing Tatum (not nearly as much as my female friends do!) and he comes across as a likeable schlub stuck in an impossible situation. Gyllenhaal is fine. Jason Clarke is Stenz, the leader of the mercenaries and he’s actually pretty good – I wish they put him in a better movie. (Oh wait, they did.) We also have the no-nonsense Lance Reddick as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, oddball Jimmi Simpson as a Beethoven-loving hacker named Skip, and Michael Murphy (!) as the vice-president. What’s Michael Murphy doing here? He usually does classier movies like Robert Altman’s Nashville... and Woody Allen’s Manhattan… and Batman Returns!

[sigh] And then there’s Jamie Fox as President James Sawyer. I like Fox and I think he’s a talented performer… but he is NO president! He’s not channeling Obama... per se... but at the same time, he comes across as, um, how shall I put this… President… Black Guy. I can’t explain it – it’s just a vibe. An actor playing a president should give off a presidential vibe – Fox doesn’t, not for a second. The filmmakers give him and Tatum playful banter and 99% of it doesn’t work. At one point, a bad guy is reaching for him and Sawyer yells, “Get your hands off my Jordans!!” Really? I think by giving the actor playing the president too many comic relief lines, it diminishes the character. Aaron Eckhart has some playful banter with Gerard Butler in the other film, but it’s two middle-aged guys just shooting the shit, and not cheap comic relief. And no, it’s not a racial thing! Denzel Washington would make a great movie president, and Morgan Freeman already played the president at least once.

If you must know, if your favorite politician has an “R” after their name, you may bristle at a couple things, though I’m offended by the clichés. The mercenaries are all (I’m paraphrasing) “right-wing wackos,” including one who apparently blew up a Post Office because it employed too many African-Americans. (Don’t give me that look – I didn’t write it!) At one point, Sawyer asks Cale, “Have you ever heard of the military-industrial complex?” No, Mr. President, we haven’t. You’re the first character in a movie to bring it up ever! To be fair, Jenkins’ character points out that both parties benefit but it’s just one plot point among many. Sawyer’s Middle East peace plan, which would remove all Allied Forces, is what precipitates the entire thing. By movie’s end, seemingly every country on the planet agrees to sign off on it. And they all lived happily ever after.

Technically... yeah. The CGI in this film is just as bad as it was in the previous film. The model shots of Air Force One in Independence Day are actually better than the CGI shots of the same plane in this one. There’s a car chase on the White House lawn which looks horrible. Somehow John McTiernan was able to film a better car chase in Die Hard with a Vengeance and he only had one car… but he didn’t use bluescreen. He used (gasp!) real actors in a real car in a real location! Now I understand that they can’t film on the real White House lawn… but I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Quality notwithstanding, movie-making is hard work and every movie is a different beast, with its own requirements and logistical challenges. Olympus Has Fallen was able to erect a one-story White House façade on a field in Louisiana… while these filmmakers built most of their White House exteriors on a bluescreen stage in Canada.

If you must, watch Olympus Has Fallen. It’s streaming on Netflix. Don’t bother with White House Down unless you’re really curious… or you have a free rental at Redbox, which is how I got to see it. Seriously, I would’ve reviewed these movies a month ago but I was waiting for the coupon code e-mail to arrive! Rumor has it Roland Emmerich is working on a sequel to Independence Day. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

“The United States of America doesn't negotiate with terrorists!”