New at the Movies: Olympus Has Fallen, Evil Dead and Escape from Planet Earth

While orig­i­nal Die Hard direc­tor John McTier­nan lan­guish­es in min­i­mum secu­ri­ty fed­er­al prison his heirs are keep­ing the action movie flame alive. Most recent­ly, Antoine Fuqua’s Olym­pus Has Fall­en might as well be called Die Hard at the White House as one man attempts to res­cue the hostages held cap­tive in the impreg­nable bunker beneath the most famous Pal­la­di­an man­sion in the world. North Kore­an ter­ror­ists have man­aged to take con­trol of the build­ing and the Pres­i­dent (Aaron Eck­hart), Sec­re­tary of Defence (Melis­sa Leo) — and some extras play­ing the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs etc. — are all cable-tied to a rail­ing while act­ing-Pres­i­dent Mor­gan Free­man and Chief of the Secret Ser­vice Angela Bas­sett are pow­er­less at the Pen­ta­gon.

What the bad guys don’t know is that dis­graced for­mer Secret Ser­vice (and Spe­cial Forces, natch) dude Ger­ard But­ler heard the shoot­ing and crossed town from his low lev­el secu­ri­ty job at Trea­sury to sneak in to the build­ing before total lock­down. Now, he’s tak­ing out the trash one by one but can he res­cue the President’s son (Fin­ley Jacob­sen) and save the free world before every nuke in the Amer­i­can arse­nal goes “boom”.

Luck­i­ly for audi­ences, Fuqua’s no fool so the exe­cu­tion occa­sion­al­ly results in an ele­vat­ed heart rate, par­tic­u­lar­ly the well-staged open­ing attack from both ground, air and inside the White House. It’s quite charm­ing that his film still thinks that the U.S. Pres­i­dent actu­al­ly has any real pow­er when recent events have shown the exact oppo­site and the leadership’s will­ing­ness to trade 50 mil­lion South Kore­an lives for one mid­dle-aged white man in a suit is kind of adorable, don’t you think?

I’ve expressed my dis­taste for Mr. But­ler sev­er­al times before in these pages and he does noth­ing here that might win me over. Oh, how I yearned for a hero with a self-dep­re­cat­ing sense of humour instead of a con­sti­pat­ed look of unshaven dis­com­fort. In fact, a sense of humour is in pret­ty short sup­ply through­out Olym­pus Has Fall­en, start­ing with the out­ra­geous­ly pompous title.

My prob­lems with Ger­ard But­ler are large­ly — I’ve been told — a mat­ter of taste. In fact, just this week­end I was told that he was quite an attrac­tive man (as movie stars go) and, pre­sum­ably, there are enough peo­ple who share that opin­ion for him still to be star­ring in expen­sive movies. It’s an awk­ward con­cept to raise in a film review, taste. We’re sup­posed to be above all that — empir­i­cal­ly objec­tive, sit­ting in even-hand­ed judge­ment so that our stars, toma­toes or thumbs can guide you all to cin­e­mat­ic enlight­en­ment. Which would be nice, but real­ly we’re just argu­ing for our taste and — hope­ful­ly — my taste mesh­es enough with yours that you con­tin­ue to find this ser­vice use­ful.

Taste was also on my mind late on Sat­ur­day night as a set­tled in to a per­ish­ing­ly cold Embassy The­atre for Evil Dead, a film that I would not nor­mal­ly choose but which I was forced to endure to a) serve you, dear read­er, and b) keep up my record of see­ing every­thing for the last six years.

Unlike many gen­uine movie lovers, I’m not a big fan of being fright­ened in a cin­e­ma — or dis­gust­ed if it comes to that — but I can recog­nise when a film deliv­ers on its own inten­tions and when the craft on dis­play is pal­pa­bly first-rate. In this reboot of the famous low bud­get tril­o­gy that launched the careers of Spi­der-Man’s Sam Rai­mi and Xena’s Rob Tapert, four young peo­ple have gath­ered at a remote cab­in in the woods to per­form an inter­ven­tion. Mia (Jane Levy) is deter­mined to final­ly kick her habit and her friends (Lou Tay­lor Puc­ci and Jes­si­ca Lucas) and broth­er David (Shiloh Fer­nan­dez) are their to sup­port her through with­draw­al.

In a colos­sal­ly bad deci­sion, Mr. Pucci’s char­ac­ter Eric reads aloud an incan­ta­tion from the spook­i­est book of occult images and spells imag­in­able — despite the clear warn­ing “DO NOT READ” writ­ten in blood on the oppo­site page. These morons deserve every­th­ng they get, don’t they? A demon is raised that takes pos­ses­sion of poor Mia and then it’s all on for young and old as a long rainy night results deliv­ers bar­rels of fake blood and some very effec­tive pros­thet­ics. Like I say, not real­ly my bag but respectable and effec­tive.

A late entry in the con­test for school hol­i­day atten­tion is the light­heart­ed and light­weight Escape from Plan­et Earth about a pair of aliens trapped in Area 51 by a pow­er-crazed Gen­er­al with the voice of William Shat­ner. These blue beings are benign — if a lit­tle naive — but their co-incar­cer­a­tees are reduced to tired eth­nic clichés as a way to get their laughs. Aimed at rough­ly the same age group as Fox’s The Croods but about half as suc­cess­ful­ly, Escape is like­ly to prove use­ful in week two of the hol­i­days if the weath­er doesn’t play ball.

This post first pub­lished at Dan Slev­in’s Funer­als & Snakes blog on Mon­day 22 April, 2013.