Die Hard In The White House 2013 Review Miniseries - Olympus Has Fallen (March 2013) vs White House Down (June 2013)

Written In January 2014

 Let me tell you what criteria the movies will be graded upon.

1. General Plot Development And Overall Simplicity In Story Telling
2. Quality Of The Action
3. Best Hero
4. Best President
5. Best Villain
6. Best Supporting Cast
7. Who Told The Story Best

So let’s get into

With Plot Development And Story Telling Simplicity

So the first thing you’ll notice when comparing these two films is one word when labeling their genres. When you go to Wikipedia, Olympus is labeled as just an action thriller. White House Down however is labeled as a political action thriller. That four syllable right away says whether or not you’ll like this movie. Olympus Has Fallen knows it’s just a silly action movie that’s meant to satisfy your lust for violence. White House Down thinks it has that rare ability to challenge you politically while still delivering spectacular action. This is a test very few filmmakers even DARE to ATTEMPT to pass. And essentially, the fellow who made the movie where Will Smith punches an alien in the face and yells “WELCOME TO EARTH!” thinks he has the intelligence to do the same thing the Bourne trilogy and the Green Zone did. So I hear you ask, did Roland Emmerich pass the test that was aced by men like Paul Greengrass? Well, I think I’ll let Gandalf answer that one for me.

Now I’m not saying you need to be an intelligent filmmaker to pull off a movie that is essentially, as I’ve said before, Die Hard In The White House, but you’re usually most likely to succeed when you don’t try to make it something more than that. When you add political intrigue into the mix, you really need to know what your talking about and how to talk about it. That’s where people like Paul Greengrass succeed. They know how to approach these subjects in a way that is still entertaining but also shows their opinion in a way people understand.

And that’s where Olympus Has Fallen succeeds! It completely oversteps politics and says, to paraphrase RedLetterMedia’s Mr. Plinkett, “We’re not making The Usual Suspects, we’re making a movie that’s aimed at action junkies!”  But speaking of smart filmmakers, this movie is made by the gentleman who directed Training Day with Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington. A movie about a rookie police officer paired with a corrupt cop who’s working with drug dealers… Suddenly I feel like these guys took the wrong movie…

Well anywho, like I was saying, one of Olympus’s advantages is it’s LACK of intelligence. It simply aspires to be an entertaining action film that will have young adult males in their thirties wanting to tattoo Gerard Butler’s face over their so that they will be as badass as him.

So that’s that for actual simplicity, but what about the plot? Well with Olympus, we only have really two twists. A retired secret service agent we meet in the first 10 minutes of the movie is working with the terrorists and in one scene it looks like the main bad guy blew himself and the president to hell but really just faked his death. And these are both pretty standard action beats I’d say. The plot moves pretty smoothly from A to Z without any real hiccups I’d say.

White House Down however? That’s a different story.

1. The head of secret service who is retiring today turns out to be an asshole with a vendetta against the president because his son was killed in the only unit he ever sent to Afghanistan.
2. The wife of this head is seemingly appalled at first but turns out to be a full supporter of her husband’s insane actions.
3. The head isn’t actually mad at the president because his son is dead because of him, he’s mad because he never stepped up to the plate when the country needed him, meaning he never sent in more troops.
4. The speaker of the house is actually the mastermind behind the head of secret service’s plot and was doing all of this to become president because he was in bed with military contractors.

There’s a lot more twists in there, but those are the main ones I wanted to address. Now let me ask you this, in a movie where one of the first things the terrorists do once inside the white house is defile a portrait of George Washington, why do these twists need to be here? Why not just give use a strait forward balls to the walls action flick? Well let me tell you why.

There, I think I made my point. There was absolutely no point in these twists, because they were poorly written and directed unconvincingly. On to the next point.

Quality Of The Action

This one’s more a matter of personal taste when you get right down to it, and even then, this is the most visual part of the medium, so I think I’ll hold off on explaining and use some displaying.

White House Down

Olympus Has Fallen

three links vs one link because i chose three 45 second clips and one 2 minute 20 second clip. But my point is, the action in Olympus has tension and focus. It doesn’t waste time cracking jokes, it just goes strait for the punches, is put in dark lighting, and has a score that doesn’t feel light and fun. It puts you on the edge of your seat, while White House Down leaves you just wanting to put popcorn in your mouth. Here’s a thought, it had been about 6 months since I last saw Olympus in theaters when it came back on Netflix, and I still remembered action beats and lines of dialogue from this movie. I saw White House Down 3 days ago and I had to go to YouTube to remember what fights happened in it. When you make an action sequence that you can’t remember after three days, you need to be fired! Now onto the next three points which I hope will emphasize why I feel the way I do about the action.

Best Hero

Why are we even comparing these two? On action credibility alone Gerard already has Channing beat!

Here’s a small list of action movies that Gerard Butler has done:

• 300
• Gamer

Here’s an equally small list of action movies that Channing Tatum has starred in:

• GI Joe: Rise of Cobra
• Haywire

Not convinced, well, let me expend on why I think the actual character is better than the other.

Mike Banning, head of secret service’s presidential detail and a former US Army Ranger. John Cale, a college dropout who joined the military after marrying his sweetheart and giving birth to a daughter, did multiple tours of duty where he saved a fellow soldier’s life who’s father got him into the US Capitol Police Department and has tried and failed on multiple occasions to become a secret service agent. Banning is a trained killer who will move mountains or die trying, to quote his superior Lynne Jacobs (Angela Basset). Cale, by his own admission, joined the military and then police in an attempt to just get away from his troubles.

Now back to Butler and Tatum, regardless of what one might think of either as an actual actor, here’s one thing every action movie needs, a convincing lead. Bruce Willis excelled as John McClane in the original Die Hard because he comes off as someone who can get by more on being a pain in the ass than an actual combatant, but when he actually has to become a combatant, you see this guy is definitely the type of guy you want by your side in a drug bust if your a police officer. Arnold Schwarzenager excelled in Terminator 2 as the titular robot because he’s built like a machine and is convincing when holding a bigass weapon. Keanu Reeves excelled as Neo in the first Matrix movie because he looks like someone with the frustration and the need to become someone greater than who he is, and actually does have martial arts skills. Gerard Butler is 44 years old and 6 foot 2 inches. This guy LOOKS the part of someone who can go toe to toe with a trained martial artist determined to kill him, and wind up beating the martial artist. Channing Tatum is 33 years old and an inch shorter. This guys looks like he’s more interested in cracking jokes with Jamie Foxx instead of saving the big white house he lives in. This in my opinion, is part of the reason why White House Down fails and Olympus Has Fallen succeeds, the character of Mike Banning is intimidating, raw, and believable. The character of John Cale, not so much.

Best President

This one is easy, Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln!

Oh wait! You meant in the two Die Hard knock offs, I see! My bad, haha. Let’s see, that’s Aaron Eckheart and Jamie Foxx.

Ah tartar sauce! Wrong character again! I need the one with them as the president!

Yes! Thank you!

Anywho, enough joking around, let’s talk about these characters. First off, as I’ve said before, Jamie Foxx’s President James W. Sawyer is as much an allusion to Barack Obama as Channing Tatum’s John Cale is to John McClane. If you realize this when watching the film, then your liking of him becomes even more dependent on your political views, because the fact that this guy is so adamantly anti-war is bound to ruffle some of the more conservative movie goers. In fact, that’s partly why I prefer Aaron Eckheart’s President (Benjamin Asher), and really Olympus Has Fallen in general, THEY DON’T GET INTO POLITICS THEY JUST GIVE YOU THE ACTION!

But to be completely fair, I wasn’t into Foxx’s president before I realized he was Obama in all but name, I didn’t like him because he was written to be a saint. Early on in the movie he’s telling a story to a reporter about how one time when he was a little kid his mother knew that his best friend was going to try to steal for food, and she invited him over and said he come by any time he wanted to, and from then on he vowed to help the poor or something to that effect. In other words, he’s perfect. He’s probably such a boy scout he’d leave the scouts when he found out they don’t support gay rights, a fact which bothers him because his older brother is gay or something. It’s not that I think this sort of attitude is wrong, it’s that he’s written to be so entirely flawless and Foxx’s delivery is just irritatingly corny!

While Aaron Eckheart, right from his first moment on screen, we see that he’s an aggressive personality. He’s exorcising with Mike, by duking it out with him in a boxing match. And also, he holds grudges. During a car accident on a bridge, Mike makes the call to save him but not the first lady. Benjamin then demotes Mike to a desk job at the Treasury Department. When he’s confronted by Dylan McDermot’s character while being held captive in the White House Bunker by Kang, he calls him a traitor to his face and butts him in the head. He’s fucking pissed and he’s not gonna hide it.

Honestly, the one thing that makes this decision a little bit difficult is a simple concept I referenced back in my White House Down review.

Precisely Mr. Spock, thank you once again. Now in Olympus Has Fallen, the villain Kang (Rick Yune) asks two members of the president’s staff for the code to something called Cerberus, a nuclear self destruct program that would detonate any nuke launched before it reaches it’s target. Kang violently tortures both staff members for these codes, neither member gives in of their own accord, but do so when ordered to by Asher. Asher doesn’t realize what Kang’s intentions are, and simply figures that whatever they are, he’ll need all three codes and he won’t talk once it’s him being tortured. While this does show a genuine concern for others, it comes off as Ben being stupid for not realizing what’s happening and even dumber when he knows they’ll be used as leverage against him later.

However, with White House Down, in one scene we get a similar situation with James. John’s daughter Emily is being held at gunpoint with James being told by the terrorists that if he does not launch a nuclear strike against the middle east they’ll kill her. John looks the little girl in the eyes, and you can hear it in his voice that he’s not proud of what he’s saying, but he knows what the right thing to do is and needs her to understand as well. He tells her that if he gives this man what he wants, he’ll kill millions of people and he can’t let that happen. He asks if she understands that. She tearfully says yes and nods her head.

This is the one time where I turned in favor of this movie, and was the one thing that kept me from giving it a lower grade than I did. So ultimately, while I think Asher is the better character and frankly the more competent leader, I really have to give props to Sawyer on this one. So, I’m going to call this one a tie, but only slightly.

Best Villain

This one is tricky, because like with the last category, I already know which I like best, but admittedly, these two are both pretty darn great villains! There not exactly someone you’d speak of in the same breath as characters like Mr. Freeze, Loki, the Joker, Red Skull, or the like, but they are far more than adaquete in the role as “the bad guy.”

So in Olympus Has Fallen we have Rick Yune as Kang Yeonsak, a North Korean terrorist who has personally masterminded multiple attacks against western governments ultimately in the hope of creating one single united Korea. In White House Down we have James Woods as Martin Walker, the retiring head of the secret service’s presidential detail who masterminds an attack against the white house and an attempt to kidnap the president.

So there’s two things I want to address real quick that actually have a connection. Now naturally whenever you go to see a movie, you’ll head for your favorite social media outlet and just post something about how much you liked the movie, or maybe some thoughts you had about it. Well a lot of folks went on Twitter after seeing Olympus Has Fallen and they said some things…

Yeah, and subsequently, a lot of folks also had a knee-jerk reaction to these tweets and the movie itself really. Such as this article here.

Let me explain something here. To the racist morons I say, well, you’re morons. Not every Asian you meet is a North Korean militant out to destroy your precious ‘Merica. Not every Middle Eastern you meet is an Arab Muslim terrorist out to bomb your favorite landmarks. Not every Latino you meet is an illegal alien out to rob you of your freedom. Not every person who isn’t white is somehow a threat to you and your way of life. If you meet a person who’s skin is a different color than yours, either leave them be or treat them as you would any other person, unless your an asshole to people in general in which case.. Kudos I suppose.

As for the morons who cry racism, North Korea is a country that doesn’t exactly like the United States of America. It makes sense in a movie where terrorists take over the White House, try to kidnap the president and kill dozens of innocent people both American and Foreign alike (it’s DC, there’s bound to be a few folks who aren’t from the States but want to see some neat landmarks) that the bad guys would be connected to North Korea. Yes, a handful of the bad guys were disguised as South Korean secret service, but honestly, that’s not a plot device you don’t see with white people. Plenty of action films have bad guys who are disguised as peaceful diplomatic individuals. And with that being said, this is also a good opportunity for Asian actors. After seeing him kill it as a bad guy in this movie, I really want to see Rick Yune do more movies. Hell, I could see as Namor if Marvel ever puts that character on screen. What would be better? Casting the Russians as bad guys making it both an unoriginal move and leaving more white people in the movie? I think not.

And speaking of the diversity, let’s get to White House Down on this one. Jamie Foxx,along with Lance Reddick and Garcelle Beauvais are the only three named characters in this film who are not white. The only other nonwhite character I noticed in the film was the guy who works the gate at the White House’s North Lawn. That’s four black people to Olympus Has Fallen’s two African-Americans and 5+ Asian actors. And yet because one of the characters in White House Down is the president and played by a big name actor like Jamie Foxx, nobody really seems to care about the overwhelmingly white cast? Wouldn’t it have been interesting to cast, say, Michael Jai White, as the leader of James Woods’ thugs, (played in film by Jason Clarke of Zero Dark Thirty fame) who is still an ex-Delta Force member but also a disgruntled Black Panther who hates Sawyer for all that he HASN’T done for black people? You literally could’ve kept the movie exactly the same, except that all of the thugs in the movie are played by black actors. Or perhaps you could’ve cast Michael B. Jordan in Channing Tatum’s place? The same character still (heck, you could even leave him with a white ex-wife and Joey King as his daughter), but now you’ve added diversity to your movie. Or how about casting maybe Samuel L. Jackson in James Woods place. Same exact character, just a different skin color. How unique would it have been for a black leader to be pitted against a fellow black man? Admittedly, even black people acknowledge that they aren’t saying shit against Obama, as they recently joked about a couple months ago on SNL when Kerry Washington hosted, in a sketch with herself, Jay Pharaoh and Kenan Thompson. But still, it would’ve actually made a strange improvement upon the film and said to audiences, “Hey, if the president is black, then why can’t the heroes be black too? Or the bad guys for that matter?” But instead, you write the thugs as disgruntled ex-military and white supremacists. Yeah, real clever Roland, real clever.

Okay, sorry about that rant. Now let’s talk about the villains we actually have. The thugs in White House Down are canon fodder. They’re there just to be shoot and/or be shot at. But James Woods, here’s an interesting idea. This guy protects the president for a living. His son was a member of the army and was part of the one single battalion Jamie Foxx ever sent overseas during his entire presidency. Walker (Woods) is angry about this, but not because it cost him his son, he mourned his son and was proud that he sacrificed his life for his country. He’s angry, because Sawyer (Foxx) didn’t send even more troops to Afghanistan. He believes in the war on terror, and thinks that the best solution now is to basically wipe the damn region off the face of the Earth. He tells Sawyer that the moment he ordered the unit with his son to the middle east was the one moment he truly respected him. “You were the president,” he says, “For five minutes!”

Rick Yune’s Kang on the other hand, is quite different. He was born in North Korea with a father who was killed during a fight at the DMZ, his mother was killed by a landmine when they tried to escape to the south. Subsequently as an adult he became a terrorist mastermind staging multiple attacks and bombings, including the titular attack on the white house and the bombing of the British Embassy in South Korea. He’s a true Korean patriot who loves his country, and hates the United States for interrupting the Civil War that caused such a powerful division in Korea and cost him his family. But he’s a die hard gentleman for being such a raging psychopath. When holding a man at knifepoint to get his launch code for Cerberus, he shows pure delight. But when beating the female sectary of defense, he hesitates. He politely asks her for her code, when she outright says no, he knocks her down and begins kicking her in the stomach. His face shows that he’s not terribly fond of this activity but will still do it out of necessity. The entire time he tries to talk her down, noting that “In Korea, we have a saying, saying something a thousand times, is not as good as living it once.” He realizes and respects that she’ll die for her country, but would prefer she simply give in so he wouldn’t have to hurt her. He also has an honor code to him, when Mike doesn’t succumb to his attempts to psych him out, he expresses a sense of admiration for him. He likes that he admits his mistake and doesn’t try to deny it, and seems kind of pleased when he just tells him to shut up after using Mike’s wife as a threat.

These two bad guys are very different, and I love that. Ultimately however, I’m gonna give the edge to Rick. I adore James, especially for his voice work as Hades and Owlman in Disney’s Hercules and DC Animation’s Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths respectively, but ultimately he’s just a planner. While Rick Yune is a doer, he physically harms people with his hands and tries to make them submit to him. And that’s fucking awesome!

Best Supporting Cast

And now we return to the realm of easy choices. In White House Down, the only real characters we have are Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Carol Finnerty, a secret service agent who was mentored by James Woods and had a fling with Channing Tatum in college. Richard Jenkins as the Speak of the House who secretly planned the attack with James Woods. Joey King as Tatum’s daughter. And Nicholas Wright as a White House Tour Guide.

Olympus Has Fallen has Morgan Freeman also as the Speaker of the house, who isn’t a corrupt asshole in this movie. Angela Basset as the director of secret service. Dylan McDermot as a former secret service agent who’s working with Kang; oh, so he’s the corrupted asshole in this movie, I got it. Melissa Leo as the Secretary of Defense who is probably the most hardcore woman in an action flick I’ve ever seen. A kid named Finley Jacobson who plays the President’s son Carter, he’s a good boy who doesn’t detract from the plot that he’s not old enough to see play on screen, haha.

So you have underdeveloped characters parading as these incredibly well written people in White House Down. And surprisingly well handled characters in Olympus Has Fallen. Olympus wins this one.

And now we come to the finale, Who Told The Story Best

In case it’s not clear by now, I already formed my opinion. I’ll admit, if you take out the parts with a child actress, replaced Channing Tatum with a more credible lead, and replaced Roland Emmerich with a Paul Greengrass, we could’ve had a really great movie here! But as it stands, Olympus Has Fallen is SUCH an entertaining movie. Yeah, it’s kinda dumb, but what’s life without a few stupid yet awesome action movies? And here’s the kicker, Olympus doesn’t try to pretend to be intelligent like White House Down does. It knows it’s just exciting popcorn entertainment to wet your pallet until the really big action movies coming out later in the year show up. Of White House Down, all I can say for a positive is this