Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

There’s a Reason I Never Voted for You.

I took myself a little break, but when it came time to come back, I wasn’t entirely sure if my break was self-imposed or not.  I could not find anything in the theaters that interested me!  Whatever was I to do?!  But then I remembered an old friend that I don’t think I’ve spent any time with recently.  An old friend by the name of RedBox.  And there were a couple of movies to be found there that I wanted to see.  Not movies I wanted to see expecting quality, but movies I wanted to see expecting quality reviews to come out of them.  And by that I mean I expect them to suck.  But we’ll just have to wait a paragraph to find out after I tell you a little bit about Olympus Has Fallen, written by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, directed by Antoine Fuqua, and starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Rick Yune, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, Finley Jacobsen, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, and Ashley Judd.

Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is the head of the Presidential Detail.  While transporting President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), First Lady Margaret Asher (Ashley Judd), and their son Connor Asher (Finley Jacobsen) to Camp David, a tree branch lands on the windshield, sending the President’s limo off the road.  Banning is only able to save the President and his son.  The most ungrateful POTUS in history then demotes Banning to the Department of the Treasury.  This turns out to be a great idea when a group of North Korean terrorists – led by Kang Yeonsak (Rick Yune) – take control of the White House in order to use something called the Cerberus system to leave the United States defenseless from nuclear attacks.  But little do these Korean terrorists know that we’re still covered by America’s first line of defense: Gerard Butler.

I would give this movie credit for being better than I expected it to be.  My expectations were admittedly low, but it was better than them.  It’s just your fairly standard action movie.  I feel like I’d probably prefer White House Down since it seems almost identical without taking itself too seriously as this movie does.  This movie tries to do the same thing in a more heavy and emotional way that never really worked for me.  It started with the death of the First Lady.  I didn’t really care.  We hadn’t really spent enough time to get emotionally attached to her.  Plus I felt the whole situation was a little stupid, especially when the helicopters arrived right afterwards and I could just imagine everyone saying, “Oh man, that’s right!  We have helicopters!  We could’ve completely avoided this bad driving conditions and come through this situation with at least one more living First Lady!  Boy is my face red.”  And then you demote Banning because he only managed to keep you and your son alive but wasn’t quite able to go above and beyond the call of duty to save your wife too?  That’s some bullshit!  He’s clearly the best guy you have, as evidenced by how easily the Koreans waltzed into the White House.  It seemed like the movie was sending a message to Korea that, if they send enough men and garbage trucks, and if Gerard Butler is busy at the time, then they can take the White House down without too much effort.  Well, if he wasn’t available, then maybe we could settle for Maverick and Goose, ‘cause they never would’ve been taken down by that giant plane with the side-mounted Gatling guns.  They would’ve been flying upside down above that airplane taunting the enemy pilots and completely safe from side-mounted Gatling guns.  And who was aiming those things anyway?  Ah, never mind…

I also didn’t get the whole situation with Kang.  I guess I get his motivation and all, but how the government people not know who he is when they see his face when he’s the most wanted terrorist in the world?  They say that he’s never been photographed, but his picture pops up with his name pretty quickly for that to be true.  Well his plan seemed pretty solid though, at least up until the end.  ::SPOILER ALERT:: I thought his ruse with putting black hoods on everyone was fairly effective for not getting his people killed since they wouldn’t know which one was the President.  It would be effective for everyone but the girl in the crew, I suppose.  The sniper could probably feel pretty safe shooting the one person in the group with tits.  The problem I had with it was that I didn’t see the point of the ruse in the first place, beyond clearing out the rest of the unnecessary people before the climax.  Why bother killing off all your men to make everyone think the President was dead when you’d be activating the Cerberus system 2 minutes later, thus proving that both you and the President were still alive.  ::END SPOILERS::

One thing that I could say with confidence about this movie is that the cast did a great job.  Gerard Butler has made some shitty choices for movies in the past, but he can still bring it with the performances.  He’s a very believable badass, and that was the bulk of what was required of him here.  I did find it amusing that America was almost destroyed because Banning doesn’t use Twitter and doesn’t know what a hash tag is, or perhaps because the other douchebag decided to use “hash tag” instead of the more commonly understood “pound sign.”  I also took issue with the President of this movie, and not just because he demoted the man who saved his life.  …asshole…  I also took issue with the fact that he kept telling his cabinet members to give up their codes to save their lives.  I understand it would make the President look like an asshole if he let them die, but that’s about 5 people who might die as opposed to the millions that will die if they give up those codes.  Let them die bravely to protect the country and do the same yourself.  ‘MERICA!!  Also, Morgan Freeman is the man.  He should not only be the President in every movie, but he should be the President in real life too.

Olympus Has Fallen was roughly what I expected it to be: decent.  It didn’t impress, but it entertained.  And I guess that impressed me because it was more than I expected.  The story was a little over-simple, but the action was pretty good and the performances were better than I would’ve expected.  This movie doesn’t qualify with me as a purchase, but it’s decent enough for a rental.  Olympus Has Fallen gets “Newsflash asshole – I don’t work for you” out of “Why don’t you and I play a game of fuck off.  You go first.”

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The Dark Knight (2008)

And … Here … We … Go!

Having already seen Batman Begins, I figured the sequel would at least be good.  Christopher Nolan’s new vision for the Batman universe struck me as mostly realistic, but totally awesome.  When the sequel was on its way, you could assume that the quality might diminish as with the greater majority of sequels.  But my hopes were fairly high regardless.  What my hopes were low about was the villain.  I was definitely amongst the group of people that thought it would be completely impossible for anyone to surpass Jack Nicholson in the role.  I was sure the actor they picked would do a fine job and, from what I had seen, he looked fantastic in the role, but come on!  It’s Jack Nicholson!  Well, what happened?  Let’s all be not surprised by the results of me reviewing The Dark Knight, story by David S. Goyer, written by Jonathan Nolan, co-written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Chin Han, Eric Roberts, Ritchie Coster, Michael Jai White, Ron Dean, Monique Curnen, Nestor Carbonell, Colin McFarlane, Nydia Rodriguez Terracina, and William Fichtner.

A make up wearing criminal known only as The Joker (Heath Ledger) is robbing mob-owned banks in Gotham City and, though he loves to show his face on camera, continuously evades Batman (Christian Bale) and Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman).  In reaction, a Chinese accountant named Lau (Chin Han) hides the money for the mob bosses – Sal Maroni (Eric Roberts), The Chechen (Ritchie Coster), and Gambol (Michael Jai White) – until the Joker shows up and tells them they are avoiding the problem.  What they really need to do is kill the Batman, which the Joker claims he can do, but he demands half of their money to do it.  If you’re good at something, never do it for free.  Out of the desperation of the mob bosses, the Joker is unleashed on Gotham.

I always remember that I like the Dark Knight before I decide to rewatch it, but it still blows my mind with how good it is.  I’ve said it before with two other movies, but this movie stands a very good chance of being my favorite comic book movie.  Avengers was easily the most fun, Watchmen is a fantastic movie as well, but the Dark Knight is an amazing movie.  So exciting, so dark, so smart, and so so good.  It’s an extremely well-written story with action, chaos, and loss.  And the darkness and realism that I liked so much about the previous movie returns for this movie.  That would, of course, mean that the Joker wouldn’t be using the toys you’d typically find him using – things like guns that pop flags with “Bang” written on them or Jack in the Box’s that explode – that Joker purists may miss, but it wouldn’t fit the atmosphere.  What you get instead is a super dark and demented insane genius that actually has his shit together while still being completely off his rocker.  We all knew the Joker was coming, though.  They hinted at it at the end of the last movie.  But when I was going into this movie, I started wondering why they didn’t hint at the villains from the next movie.  But I think I found one.  It seems like there was a very good chance that, when Bruce asks Lucius how his new suit will do against dogs and Lucius said, “It should be fine against cats,” it may have been a hint that I never caught before.  As much as I loved the movie, I took issue with a few smaller things in the story.  The first was that I never understood what happened with the rescues of Rachael and Harvey.  Batman tells the cops that he’s going after Rachael as he’s leaving the police station, but then he shows up to rescue Harvey.  Did the Joker lie to Batman and he actually intended to rescue Rachael, or did he change his mind off camera and tell the cops to go after Rachael?  It’s always kind of bugged me.  The second was the cell phone echolocation machine that Bruce had built.  He spends all this money and all this time researching and perfecting this technology to find one man one time, and then he blows it all up.  I grant that it worked, but it just seems so wasteful.  The third part I had a problem with was towards the end of the movie, when someone was going to punish someone else by having him choose between his wife, daughter, and son which one he loved most.  How shitty do the wife and daughter feel?

The action in this movie was spectacular, made even better by the fact that the greater majority of it was done practically and involved minimal computer graphics.  As good as computer graphics have gotten over the years, you can usually tell when it’s fake.  Most of the Dark Knight is not fake, as best as I could tell.  There were plenty of highlights amongst the visuals, but I’ll focus on three.  Two of them were in the same fantastic action scene: when the Joker was trying to destroy the SWAT vehicle with Harvey in it.  It was freakin’ amazing when the Tumbler drove into the garbage truck that was following the SWAT vehicle, smashing the top of the garbage truck into the ceiling of the underground road.  Thinking that couldn’t be topped, slightly later they make a semi do a front flip.  Later on, they even actually blow up a building to simulate Gotham Hospital.  Suck it, Avatar!  You can take your blue people with hair dicks back to Pandora and sit on Home Tree.

Credits be damned.  Even amongst the stellar performances in this movie, I think we all know who the real star of this movie is: Maggie Gyllenhaal.  I don’t know how they didn’t incorporate it into the story that, much like Harvey Dent, Rachael must’ve endured some serious trauma and third-degree burns in between the first and second movie, and all in the face region.  In fact, the moment I realized that the Joker was truly insane was when he referred to this new Rachel as “beautiful”.  Okay, in truth I don’t think Maggie Gyllenhaal is as ugly as all of the things I say about her indicate, but she’s certainly not great looking.  And the real star of the movie is actually Heath Ledger.  This mother fucker disappears into the role of the Joker, and easily (and surprisingly) blows Jack Nicholson’s take on the character right out of the water.  I believe that, had I gone into this movie unaware of the Joker’s true identity, I may not even have recognized Ledger in this movie.  He’s that fucking good.  I said it after I first saw the movie and it’s as true today as it was then, but everything else in this movie could’ve been complete horse shit and his performance alone would’ve made it worth seeing.  It truly was the performance of a lifetime, and a gundamned shame that it was the last performance in his lifetime.  The only non-Gyllenhaal performance I took issue with in this movie was Melinda McGraw as Commissioner Gordon’s wife.  All of her reactions to bad news in this movie were a little over the top and never convincing.

The Dark Knight is an amazing movie.  The story is great, the action is fantastic, and the performances are all terrific.  There’s not a lot of bad things to be found in this movie, but even if there were, the movie would be worth the watch for Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker alone.  The fact that the rest of the movie is also amazing is just icing on the cake.  I don’t know that I’d be comfortable calling the Dark Knight my favorite comic book movie of all time, but it would certainly be considered.  This movie should not only be owned; it should be watched at least once per month.  Put it on your calendars.  The Dark Knight gets “A little fight in you.  I like that” out of “Harvey Dent.  Can he be trusted?”

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