His chance finally comes when North Korean terrorists launch an absurdly ambitious, multipronged attack involving suicide bombers, heavy artillery, precision commandos and a stolen Air Force plane that strafes the sidewalks and decimates the White House’s tactical teams. Then Banning is unfairly blamed for a terrible accident and spends the next 18 months riding a desk at the Treasury Department, longing for a way back in. When he isn’t boxing with the prez at Camp David, he’s quizzing Asher’s young son (Finley Jacobsen) on emergency protocols.

(Unofficial motto: Why kill someone with two or three bullets when you can kill them with a dozen?)īecause once you get past the novelty of seeing guerrilla warfare erupt on the White House lawn, “Olympus” rings nearly as hollow as most everything else that comes out of Washington.Īs the head of President Benjamin Asher’s (Aaron Eckhart) Secret Service detail, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is practically an honorary member of the first family. Getting out in front of the very similar “White House Down,” the Channing Tatum-Jamie Foxx actioner set to hit theaters June 28, is the best thing that could have happened to this exercise in excess.

Of all of this year’s movies in which a lone hero is tasked with saving the president when a violent paramilitary group seizes the White House, “Olympus Has Fallen” is certainly one of them. Morgan Freeman is one of three Oscar winners in the supporting cast for “Olympus Has Fallen.” All this talent, though, can’t lift the movie above banal.

White house down olympus has fallen