Tag Archives: thriller

Olympus has Fallen

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olympus fallen

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Writer: Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedikt

Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Rick Yune, Dylan McDermott

Tomatometer: 49/41/79 (all critics, top critics, audience)

Spoiler-free Summary: Leonidas is a Secret Service superstar.  One Christmas Eve, he elects to save the President’s life, instead of letting him die.  The President gets pissed, subsequently throwing Leonidas off his detail.  Eighteen months later, with tensions rising along the North/South Korean border, the South Korean Prime Minister visits the White House, a.k.a. Olympus.  Things don’t turn out quite as planned, and Olympus falls into the hands of a terrorist.  Leonidas fills in for John McClane, who was filming something else.

Two Cents: 2013 is starting to look like 1998, 2006, and a host of other years.  You know, those years when Hollywood collectively decides XYZ is the hot, new thing, subsequently multiple movies about the ame thing.  In 1998, we watched Earth get destroyed by a giant space rock in Deep Impact, only to see mankind (except for John McClane, of all people) narrowly avoid a similar space rock-induced disaster in Armageddon less than two months later.  Similarly, in 2006, we were mesmerized by The Illusionist, the first magician-gone-bad movie in quite some time, just two months before its doppelganger, The Prestige, magically appeared at a theater near you.  With that same unbridled creativity, we welcome Olympus has Fallen, the appetizer to the main course that is White House Down.  In most cases like these, the first course is satisfactory, but inferior to the second.  (No Strings Attached (1/11) vs. Friends with Benefits (7/11)?  I rest my case.  [Fun Fact: Justin Timberlake starred {though, with his acting skills, I should probably use a different word} in FwB, but only after recording an album titled No Strings Attached with N*Sync.])  While Olympus is certainly a satisfactory action film, we’ll have to wait until June 28th to see if it can break the curse of the first-born.

Gerard Butler is a man’s man.  Sure, he plays soccer with Jessica Biel once in a while, but who wouldn’t?  Butler kicks some serious behind in this movie, but he’s a good enough actor to be taken seriously, even when the story takes a hard left toward ridiculousness.  He’s got emotion and charisma; he’s not just a The Rock with a gun, as is often the case with action stars.  Of course, this movie is about one thing – action – but Butler does a good job of keeping the viewer invested in the story, while none of the other actors/characters do much of anything.

As President Asher, Aaron Eckhart is lifeless.  As Secret Service Director Lynn Jacobs, Angela Bassett completely loses Stella’s groove.  As Agent Forbes, Dylan McDermott makes the closing argument in the case for TV stars to stick with TV.  Melissa Leo is unrecognizable as the Secretary of Defense (she won an Oscar, for crying out loud!).

During the third act, the movie actually becomes comical, ending with one of the worst closing one-liners of all time (possibly on par with the closing one-liner in Vantage Point).   Of course, I may be a bit biased here, since I once wrote a screenplay about the White House being taken over by terrorists, but at least mine was a comedy; I was willing to acknowledge the fact that the whole premise is a joke.  However, Fuqua does a good job of keeping the action going throughout the film, making the weak plot more than bearable.  Of course, that’s just putting a Bandaid on a cracked skull, but it’s a common practice (For example, this morning, on a Delta flight, I saw a man ask the flight attendant for “one of those seatbelt thing”.  A moment later, the flight attendant brought over a seatbelt extender, an extra strap and buckle to be attached to the man’s existing seatbelt, because he couldn’t fit it around his stomach.), so, I’ll give him a pass.  Furthermore, the entire film takes place in The White House, one of the most interesting buildings in the world.  I did a boatload of research about 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for my screenplay, but I still learned a bunch of cool facts from Fuqua’s film (assuming most of the “facts” are, indeed, facts and not, simply, “facts”).

By the way, I’m 98% certain that this conversation took place a few years ago:

Film Producer #1: We’re making a movie about a crisis in the White House.

Film Producer #2: We should get Morgan Freeman to play the president during a crisis.  He’s done it a million times!

Film Producer #1: We totally should.  But, is it too obvious?

Film Producer #2: I know!  Let’s pull a fast one on everyone and NOT make Morgan the president.  Instead, we’ll make him the Speaker of the House, and people will be like, “What?  You guys are geniuses!  I never saw that coming!”.  Then, five seconds into the movie, he’ll become the ACTING president!

Film Producer #1: Let’s give ourselves a raise.

Should I/Shouldn’t I: I think there’s a Constitutional amendment that makes it mandatory for Americans to see action movies involving the President of the United States.  If that’s the case, you could do worse than spend two hours in a theater with Olympus.  Although he’s chosen some mediocre material this time around, and pinched a few pennies on the special effects, Fuqua is a supremely talented director (he helped Denzel win an Oscar for Training Day) working with a usually-stellar cast.  The final product is not nearly as great as the sum of its parts, but you will be entertained by Olympus‘s action sequences, the terrorists’ intricate coup, and Butler’s ability to not suck when so much around him is sucking.

Sundae Rating: Two scoops

Snitch

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snitch

Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Writer: Justin Haythe, Ric Roman Waugh

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Barry Pepper, Jon Bernthal, Susan Sarandon

Tomatometer: 54/54/81 (all critics, top critics, audience)

Spoiler-free Summary: The Rock has a son.  His name is Pebble.  Pebble, like many teenagers, is stupid enough to think teenagers can be trusted.  Unfortunately for Pebble, the person he trusts most, his best friend, Craig, is a drug dealer.  The thing about drug dealers is they often have questionable morals.  I know, right?  Who knew?  Anyway, Craig is a douche, so, he frames Pebble in order to cover his own ass.  Lucky for Pebble, his estranged father is ready and willing to help, especially if it means keeping his son from becoming someone’s girlfriend in prison.

Two Cents: With so much buzz surrounding Hollywood during the months of January and February, many people are unaware of the fact that the movies that get released during the first sixth of the year generally suck more than a turkey baster.  In the dead of winter, movie theater screens are filled with dreck that studio executives distribute early in the year, in order to make sure that those lines in their Power Point presentations have nowhere to point but upward.  Slick move, Ari Gold.  Also, they know there’s no point in releasing a decent film until March, because moviegoers use their January and February weekends to catch up on all of the Oscar-nominated pictures they haven’t yet seen.  Now, you understand why movies like Snitch get made.

I’m a fan of movie stars.  I find it comforting to know that certain actors (a term that includes actresses) will keep popping up on screens, whether they deserve to or not.  That phenomenon gives us common-folk a chance to become familiar with certain actors, watch them grow, and feel as if we are along for the rides that are their respective careers.  However, I’m also a fan of type-casting, the tendency for actors to get pigeon-holed into playing a small range of roles for long stretches of time, in numerous productions.  For example, Will Ferrell always plays the unreasonably arrogant fool.  He’s great at it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  That’s why, even when he does a decent job in something like Stranger than Fiction, he keeps getting pulled back into projects like Anchorman 2.  Few actors have the ability to break their “type” and change the trajectory of their careers.  I, for one, am excited to see if Bradley Cooper’s Oscar-nominated performance in SIlver Linings Playbook allows him to avoid a lifetime of playing the funny douchebag.  Only time will tell.

Unfortunately for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, most of the executives in Hollywood believe in type-casting, as well, and Johnson’s work in Snitch isn’t going to change any of their minds.  I love a good unlikely-hero-comes-to-the-rescue thriller, but I’ve always believed that the hero in such movies needs to be someone whom most people wouldn’t actually expect to save the day.  Remember how Nicholas Cage dominated life in Con Air?  That is exactly what I’m talking about.  He was a quiet, nervous family man surrounded by a dozen tough-as-nails thugs, yet he built up the courage to take control of that plane and save the gosh-darn day.  In Snitch, The Rock tries to come off as a similarly decent, keep-your-head-down-and-work-hard family man.  When stuff starts to hit the fan, he doesn’t rip off his shirt and start throwing dudes over mountains, rather he plays the vulnerable hero, who is only motivated by his love for his son.  Not a bad way to go, if his character were being portrayed by, say, Liam Neeson.  However, when the only guy in the room standing over six feet tall and benching over 300 pounds is also the only guy in the room with a puddle next to his shoes, you know someone has made a casting error.  If that same guy also still has a long way to go before he can safely be referred to as an actor, you’ve got an even bigger problem.

I can’t say I hated this movie, because it did provide me some entertainment.  I just didn’t connect to the main character, because I didn’t find him believable.  I also found the Rock issue to be exacerbated by what I call “and-casting”, the practice of placing currently popular/famous actors in the lead roles of a movie, then filling out the bit parts with formerly popular/famous (and well-respected) actors in order to give the film more legitimacy.  In other words, after they list all the lead actors during the opening credits, they’ll finish the role call with “and Paul Giamatti” (The Hangover Part II) or “with Julie Christie and Peter O’Toole” (Troy).  And-casting can be a real treat, when it brings an already impressive cast up another notch.  When the lead actors are not carrying their weight, however, and-casting doesn’t hide those flaws, rather it puts them squarely in focus.  The film would have been far better served had Susan Sarandon and (the under-appreciated) Barry Pepper been cast in lead roles, as opposed to their  inconsequential, supporting ones.  (Oh, by the way, producers, Benjamin Bratt is not worthy of an “and”, or even a “with”.  He’s just a guy.  That’s it.)

Should I/Shouldn’t I: When you see a movie that stars a man who calls himself “The Rock”, you want to see that guy kick copious amounts of derriere.  You won’t get that in Snitch.  The story doesn’t make up for the lack of action, either.  If you’re a fan of Johnson’s, you’d be better off waiting for Fast & Furious 6, which is probably going to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys.  If you’re in the mood for an action flick that involves drug dealers and family men, there are a few of those out there, as well.  Try the Bad Boys movies.

Sundae Rating: One scoop