Olympus has Fallen

I just saw Olympus has Fallen. One the scale of 1-10 of action movies, with 10 being the best action movie ever made, and 1 being the worst (GI Joe), I give it a 2. I wish I could have that $11 and those two hours of my life back. Spoiler alert, don't continue if you want to see the movie.


First, there is an opening scene where our protagonist, a Secret Service Agent, shuttles the President and his family from Camp David in a motorcade during a snow storm. There is an accident, the First Lady goes over the side of a bridge in the Presidential Limo just after the agent pulls the President out. The agent is pulled off the detail in disgrace.

A year and a half later, a sort of, but not quite AC130 that wears USAF markings enters the restricted airspace over the Whitehouse, shoots down two fourth generation fighters, and strafes the entire area around the place, and takes out half the secret service. The plane is piloted by everyone's new bad guys, the North Koreans. The Secret Service fires what appears to be a pair of RIM-7 Sea Sparrows at the plane from an IBPDMS launcher that pops out of the roof, but the plane avoids destruction by using decoy flares. A pretty good trick, since the RIM-7 is Semi-Active Radar Homing.

There are 40 commandos who take the Whitehouse in less than 15 minutes, manage to get into the bunker located 120 feet under the Whitehouse, and capture the President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the entire Cabinet, and the SecDef. They use the hostages to accomplish two things:

- Get the 3 part code to cause the US nuclear aresenal to self destruct by remote control by threatening the SecDef and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs with death if they don't hand them over. They then get the President's code through a brute force attack. I was sitting there wondering who the IT guys were that would allow a brute force on such an important code, and wondering why the people weren't given duress codes that would deactivate the system if entered.
Apparently, according to the movie, the self destruct charges, if activated while the missiles are still in the silos, would cause sympathetic detonation of the warheads. Nevermind that the explosion of a nuclear warhead requires a number of specific events happening in a specific sequence, at precise times... so no, there cannot be any "sympathetic detonation" of nuclear warheads. In fact, any explosion going off with a nuclear warhead in its blast radius renders the warhead incapable of successfully exploding.

- and get the Speaker of the House to order the 7th Fleet and the US Army to back away from defending South Korea. The idea is that without the 28,000 personnel of the US Army, the Republic of Korea's 639,000 active duty troops augmented with nearly 3 million reservists would be helpless. (Hint: The US troops in South Korea are a tripwire force.)

The commandos follow the military's every move with a drone. Never mind that it is impossible to control a drone by radio from 120 feet underground in an EMP hardened bunker. The Commandos also install a stolen US antiaircraft system that shoots down the SEAL team enroute for the rescue. When the commandos installed the system, they even managed to wire it into the Whitehouse power system with an electrical panel in a manner that would pass inspection. I don't understand why the protagonist had to steal an RPG to blow up the system when he was standing right next to the power disconnect.

Another thing I couldn't figure out is where the Third Infantry Regiment was in all of this. Yes, I know it is an honor guard unit, but is still a fully functional and qualified infantry regiment. There is also an entire company of combat ready Marines at the Marine Barracks at 8th and I streets, just 3 miles from the Whitehouse. In short, there are over 2,000 US troops within 10 miles of the Whitehouse, not to mention the thousands of cops and secret service agents.

The movie ended in a predictable manner, with the head of the commando force getting in a martial arts fight with the protagonist, just like every action movie has in the past 20 years. Then, the protagonist goes outside to find his ER nurse girlfriend staffing an ambulance in her scrubs, surprised to see him. Never mind that you wouldn't catch an RN within 100 yards of the back of an ambulance.

In short, this movie had many technical and plot holes, and was the worst sort of popular drivel. Stay away, save your money, and if you must, catch it on TV or rent the DVD.