Film Critical Essay
Xinyue Zhang
I saw the movie “Olympus Has Fallen” in the AMC Lennox Theatre on a Saturday night with one of my friends. There were not very much people in the theatre and for the movie I saw, there were only 20 to 30 people. There weren’t any children and all the people were very quiet so I felt really comfortable. The story in the movie happened recently because it involved nuclear war between America and North Korea. The main character Mike Banning is played by Gerard Butler. He used to be the President’s lead secret service agent. The movie starts with an accident happened 18 months before the story. It was during Christmas and the family of the President was going ...view middle of the document...
He gets an ear phone and uses it to maintain contact with the Acting President Allan. Mike’s first task is to save the President’s son Connor since Kang wants to use Connor to threaten the President. The reason Kang attacks the House is to force America to retreat the military force in South Korea and stops the civil war. Also, he wants to get the access to a program called Cerberus that will blow up all of the nuclear weapons in America to revenge for his mother who was killed by an American. Mike successfully saved Connor and he makes Kang to believe that he is died by force one of the terrorist, who is also an old colleague of Mike to lie to Kang that he kills Mike. After that, Mike destroys an anti-aircraft gun and rescues the Secretary of Defense. However, before he can reach the bunker, Kang gets all the codes to get access of Cerberus and it will be start in 5 minutes and the Acting President agree to all the conditions he mentioned. They send a helicopter to the House and Kang makes everyone to believe that the President is on that helicopter and then he blows it up. Everyone except Mike believes that the President is killed by Kang. When Kang tries to escape from the House with the President, Mike shows up and kills Kang and he stops Cerberus in the last 3 seconds. At the end, the President escapes from the House safely and Mike becomes the lead secret service agent again.
I think all those action scenes in the movie make me very exciting because all the settings inside the House and those buildings outside the House look like the same as reality. The director successfully pulled me into the world of the movie by using all these amazing visual effects. But the story lacks something that is can really surprise me since the story line is pretty simple. Everything just flows in a regular and normal way. Lots of people died during the rescue and the main actor is able to survive in every situation and all the bad people will die at the end of the story. Justice won again. However, I really like one sign in the movie that when the terrorists attack the House, the national flag is destroyed and is pulled down by those terrorist. At that time, the color of the flag is dim. At the end of the film, when the President makes a speech about how America will heal from this attack, the flag is rise again in a colorful way. It is effective to use the national flag to represent the condition of a country. The genre of this movie is drama and action. It is mainly for adults to watch because most of the scenes are very violent and cruel, especially the scenes that Kang just shoot the prime minister of South Korea and the vice president of America in the head in front of the screen during connection with the Acting President. There are lots of Korean languages in the conversation and I think this makes the story more real because if all the terrorists from Korea can speak English, it will not make much sense. The director shows the time in the story...
