On the First Day of Die Hard, My True Love Gave to Me...

The formula of a Die HardThe 1980s were famous for the bombastic action films released during the decade. Featuring big burly men fighting other big burly men, often with more guns, bombs, and explosions than appear in Michael Bay's wildest dreams, the action films of the decade were heavy on spectacle, short on realism. And then came a little film called Die Hard that flipped the entire action genre on its head. clone should be pretty easy to understand. All it takes is an unusual hero (a deadbeat cop where he’s not supposed to be, a wildman, a kid, etc.), a building to get locked inside, and a bunch of terrorists out for their own self-interests. If you put those three things together, shake ‘em up, and then spill the contents out in a new way, you have a Die Hard, more or less. The formula is resilient, and it allows for a lot of locations, a lot of heroes, and a lot of terrorists to kill. Every studio has put out a Die Hard clone or two over the years, and sometimes two different studios put out the same kind of clone months apart from one another.

2013 saw the release of two different Die Hard clones set within the White House. The first came out in March of that year, from Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer, The Magnificent Seven) and Millennium Films and it proved to be the more financially successful of the two films (the other being White House Down, which we’ll cover in a bit). Starring Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart, the film was made on a budget of $70 Mil and went on to bring in $170 Mil at the Box Office. Once home video sales and licensing was taken into account, the movie made more than enough money to warrant two further sequels (with a third in development) and a spin-off TV series.

And yet, honestly, Olympus Has Fallen is a terrible film. It’s a self-serious, jingoistic, overtly over-the-top patriotic film that doesn’t know how to temper itself in any way, shape, or form. It’s the distilled embodiment of “America, Fuck Yeah!” without a trace of irony in any of its film cells. It’s the kind of dad rock action film that would begin to appear on Amazon Prime, becoming that network’s bread and butter. It’s not challenging, it doesn’t have anything political to say (beyond “America good!”), and it leaves you feeling gross, dirty, and empty after it’s all over with. And somehow this was the successful version of the movie. What the hell?

We start around Christmas time at Camp David where Secret Service team leader Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is working the President’s detail. He escorts President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), along with First Lady Margaret Asher (Ashley Judd) and son Connor (Finley Jacobsen) to the limos where they will take the family to a billionaire’s party (we never learn who the billionaire is or why the President feels the need to go out to meet them at Christmas time, as the film doesn’t care). Unfortunately for the caravan, the lead SUV crashes and slides, skidding on a bridge. The President’s limo, with him and his wife inside, follows, sliding to the edge. Mike has to fight to get into the car and save the President, but there’s no way to save his wife before she, and the vehicle go off the bridge, into the icy water far below.

Eighteen months later, Mike is now over at Treasury, off the President’s detail because, as we’re told, the President just can’t bear to have Mike around as a reminder of what happened. The President has a meeting with the South Korean Prime Minister, but when an unidentified plane flies over Washington D.C. and then opens fire on two Army jets sent to escort it, the President, along with the South Korean detail (at the President’s orders) is sent to the secure bunker to wait it out. But there’s more than just a plan on the way as several dozen Korean soldiers storm the White House, taking it over. And the men on the Prime Minister’s detail are actually terrorists. They kill the Prime Minister and take the President and key officials (Secretary of Defense, the Vice President) hostage. And the only man up, ready, and able to handle the job of getting the President back is Mike, who came running to the White House the second everything went pear shaped.

Considering all the various places we’ve seen Die Hard-style movies take place – trains, stadiums, buses, office buildings, Air Force One – the White House is a good place to drop one of these films, at least in theory. A bunch of terrorists taking over, as this film puts it, “the most secure building in the world,” certainly does make for some interesting stakes. It’s not just money that the terrorists are after but control on the world’s stage. I like the idea of that, blending a bit of Jack Ryan into Die Hard. It works at that base, lizard brain, dad rock level.

It’s in the execution, though, that Olympus Has Fallen really falters. For starters, for all his gruff vocalizing, Gerard Butler just doesn’t cut a very interesting action star. He’s got the muscles and the intensity, yes, but he lacks the strength as an actor to really pull it off. He’s too one note, too generic, to show the kind of charisma needed to sell his place in the film. Plus, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t really know how to fight. All of his action scenes are cut and recut more times than Liam Neeson climbing a fence in a Taken film. He’s cut to look spry and energetic, but it leaves the action feeling piecemeal and thrown together. It’s not good.

Or maybe that’s just the fault of Anton Fuqua, as no one in this film really comes across as that great of an actor this time. You get the vibe that many of them, from Robert Forster to Angela Bassett and Morgan Freeman, are all just here collecting a paycheck. They clearly know what kind of movie they’re in (a Z-grade Die Hard) and are giving just as much performance as the film is worth. They aren’t bad, but they certainly aren’t good. No one other than Ashley Judd (who only has to be in for a few brief scenes and clearly figured she could earn her paycheck) acts well at all.

I would actually argue that Aaron Eckhart comes across the worst. He has to be the President, calm and collected and able to lead under pressure. The script does him no favors with the kinds of dialogue he has to deliver, but I never once believed that anyone would look at this guy, Ben Asher, and think, “yeah, this is the cool, strong leader we need.” Especially not in 2013 before people decided Trump was the right man for the job (twice, for some stupid reason). He’s not presidential at all.

And let’s be clear, the film also doesn’t really understand the formula for this kind of film. Mike is a trained Secret Service agent, as well as a former Army Ranger (and he has a bunch of other skills and past life duties that all get rattled off at us). There is never, at any moment, a concern that Mike can’t handle the job. When John McClane goes scampering through Nakatomi Plaza, it’s clear just from who he is that he’s not a guy meant to be battling terrorists. He’s an average joe, a beat cop, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mike is where he’s supposed to be, and that drains all the tension out of the movie. A Secret Service agent going into the White House to protect the President? That’s not front page news. That’s barely two paragraphs on page 10. Of section D. And who even reads newspaper’s anyway? It just doesn’t work.

This film is laughably bad in all the ways that matter. First, there is no way the terrorists could take over the White House the way they do. For them to get the position they need to pull off this plan they need (a) their plan to get so close to the White House that it can lead the attack, (b) for the President to decide to take not only the Prime Minister but all of his entourage into the White House bunker, and (c) for every secret service agent to be as brainless as possible to let it all happen. None of those steps are possible, to the point that this film is actually less plausible than Die Hard 2, and that was a low bar to slide under.

But even if you ignore that and shut your brain off, the film is one long jingoistic, racist rant. All of the terrorists are Asian, since they’re secret North Korean infiltrators, outside of one ex-Secret Service dude, Dylan McDermott's Dave Forbes, to act as the token white guy. And, of course, it’s Forbes who gets the only redemption arc, suddenly realizing that he’s playing for the bad guys and lost his way. Does anyone else on the terrorist’s side act like this? Nope. They’re all true believers wanting to see America turned into a nuclear wasteland.

Why? Uhm… reasons? They’re sick of their country being a welfare state, in effect, and they blame the U.S. for this because the U.S. doesn’t allow North Korea to fight and take over South Korea. They don’t look inwards, to blame the North Korean regime. That would be too logical. So they have to kill all the Americans because “American bad?” Which only makes the fact that all of them are Asians seem worse. It does mean we can tell the good guys apart from the bad guys, because all the good warriors are white. White people save the world!

I don’t know. It just seems all so perverse when you go back and watch it again. As the music swells while shots of the flag burn, or when the Washington Monument crumbles. As the Secretary of Defense shouts the pledge of allegiance while she’s dragged off to be killed. Everyone that’s a hero in this film is a true blue believer in the U.S. state and the ones that are most patriotic are the ones that survive. There’s no introspection, no need for it when your bad guy is an over-the-top terrorist with a really stupid understanding of global politics. It’s black and white, incredibly basic, and outlandishly stupid.

And people ate it up. Audiences turned out for this film, enjoying the America Pride mentality of it all. In the post 9/11 world, this was the kind of Die Hard people want, and it makes me feel skuzzy going back to watch it again. Terrorists attacking the White House is bad, I think we can all agree. But, just maybe, have a little understanding of America’s place in the global stage before you go off and maybe an unabashedly jingoistic screed like this.