Olympus Has Fallen [2 Discs] [Blu-ray/DVD]

Director: Antoine Fuqua Antoine Fuqua

Overview

An ex-Special Forces operative and former presidential bodyguard must fight to take back the White House from terrorists who have kidnapped the Commander in Chief in this high-stakes action thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Shooter) and starring Gerard Butler. In the aftermath of a tragic accident involving the president (Aaron Eckhart) and the first lady (Ashley Judd), Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Butler) is handed his walking papers. When a powerful terrorist group seizes command of the White House and takes the president hostage, the entire nation watches as the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman) becomes the acting president, and plans his response. Meanwhile, Banning finds himself trapped in the White House as it comes under siege from all sides. With no choice but to fight back against the heavily-armed invaders, Banning must rely on his extensive knowledge of the building to rescue the president, and prevent the situation from spiraling into all-out war. Melissa Leo, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, and Radha Mitchell co-star.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/13/2013
UPC:	0043396425972
Original Release:	2013
Rating:	R
Source:	SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMT
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:59:00
Sales rank:	4,146

Special Features

Only on Blu-ray; Bloopers; Under surveillance: the making of Olympus Has Fallen; Creating the action: special effects & design; The epic ensemble; Deconstructing the black hawk sequence; Ground combat: fighting the terrorists

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Rick Yune	Kang
Aaron Eckhart	Actor
Morgan Freeman	Actor
Angela Bassett	Actor
Melissa Leo	Actor
Ashley Judd	Actor
Dylan McDermott	Actor
Radha Mitchell	Actor
Robert Forster	Actor
Cole Hauser	Actor
Phil Austin	Actor
Finley Jacobsen	Actor
James Ingersoll	Actor
Freddy Bosche	Diaz
Lance Broadway	O'Neil
Sean O'Bryan	Ray Monroe
Keong Sim	Lee Tae-Woo
Kevin Moon	Cho
Malana Lea	Lim
Sam Medina	Yu,Yu
Josiah D. Lee	Korean Pilot,Korean Pilot
Edrick Browne	Head Technician
Sean Boyd	Raptor Pilot
Gerard Butler	Mike Banning
Aonika Marie Laurent	News Reporter #2
Sione Maumalanga	Sniper #2
Michelle Celeste	News Reporter #3
Darrell L. Connerton	CIA Director
Terry Parks	Army Commander
Michael Stallings	Army Lieutenant
Elliott Grey	FBI Assistant Director
Scott Walker	Male Reporter
Catherine Shreves	Female Reporter
Mike Snyder	News Reporter #1
Hunter Burke	Army Tech Officer
Aonika Laurent	News Reporter #2
Jace Jeanes	Sniper #1
Tory Kittles	Agent Jones
Shane Land	Agent Davis
Shanna Forrestall	Mary Jane Fuller
Ian Casselberry	Long-Haired EMT
Dorothy Deavers	Mrs. Mosely
Amber Dawn Landrum	Nurse
Han Soto	Male Doctor
Kenneth Wayne Bradley	Crisis Room Radio Man
Bill Stinchcomb	Watch Officer
Met Salih	News Reporter #4
Trevor Morris	Composer

Technical Credits

Creighton Rothenberger

Katrin Benedikt

Antoine Fuqua	Director,Producer
Creighton Rothenberger	Screenwriter
Katrin Benedikt	Screenwriter
Gerard Butler	Producer
Alan Siegel	Producer
Avi Lerner	Executive Producer,Producer,Producer
Trevor Short	Executive Producer,Producer
Boaz Davidson	Executive Producer,Producer
Danny Dimbort	Executive Producer,Producer
Peter Schlessel	Executive Producer,Producer
Guy Avshalom	Producer
Ed Cathell III	Producer
Christine Crow	Producer
Will French	Producer
Zygi Kamasa	Producer
Lonnie Ramati	Producer
Robert Van Norden	Producer
Carlos Acevedo	Special Effects
Wade Barnett	Sound Effects
Paul Timothy Carden	Sound Effects
Tanja Crouch	Sound Effects
Heidi Jo Markel	Producer,Executive Producer
Danielle Robinson	Producer
James Going	Special Effects
Kristina Baskett	Stunts
Darryl Chan	Stunts
Arden Cho	Stunts
Arnold Chon	Stunts
Kurt Deville	Stunts
Eyad Elbitar	Stunts
Chris J. Fanguy	Stunts
Walter Garcia	Stunts
Brian Ho	Stunts
Radoslav Ignatov	Stunts
Yoshio Iizuka	Stunts
Jace Jeanes	Stunts
Larry Lam	Stunts
Eddie Matthews	Stunts
Stilyan Mavrov	Stunts
Tadahiro Nakamura	Stunts
Carl Anthony Nespoli	Stunts
Stephen Oyoung	Stunts
Tim J. Smith	Stunts
Mark Gill	Producer
John Thompson	Executive Producer
Ryan Glorioso	Casting
David Esparza	Sound/Sound Designer
Steve Aaron	Sound Mixer

Editorial Reviews

On the one hand, Olympus Has Fallen is total crap. It's filled to the brim with the sort of tired, uncreative clichés that no action fan wants to see for the eleven-millionth time unless it's done in a really new, really interesting way -- which is definitely not the case here. But on the other hand, Olympus Has Fallen is an action movie with a hard-quipping cowboy-type lead, written according to the Die Hard template (elevator pitch: "It's Die Hard in the White House!"), and it actually has an R rating. That means satisfyingly gratuitous violence (Gerard Butler stabs a guy in the head!) and a carpet f-bombing in the form of gritty one-liners delivered into a walkie-talkie. That counts for a lot, especially in an age in which action films with even a smidge of humor -- including one out of the two recent entries in the actual Die Hard franchise -- are so concerned with tween ticket sales that they're shackled with a PG-13 rating that prevents the hero from properly talking smack or exacting any kind of gratifying revenge on the bad guys. Does all this not-safe-for-basic-cable catharsis make up for Olympus Has Fallen's overall crappy writing (and Secret Service agents who have apparently never been trained in basic SWAT procedure)? That depends on how desperate you are for grown-up ass kicking in your action fare. But if you're interested in this movie in the first place, it probably does. The basic story is that Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) gets transferred to a desk job at the Federal Reserve after he saves U.S. president Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) during a car accident but fails to rescue the First Lady (Ashley Judd). It's not that Mike can't be trusted -- he's a former Delta Force Ranger and he did save the president's freaking life (which makes it weird that the best thing they can offer him is an office job) -- he just reminds Asher of his dead wife, and it's too painful to have him around. But about a year later, an impossibly skilled and well-organized paramilitary faction from North Korea (the same North Korea that can't even get a missile to end up somewhere other than 100 yards out into the Pacific Ocean, but whatever), led by an angular genius named Kang (Rick Yune), stage a crowd-attack on Washington, D.C., employing everything from fighter jets to suicide bombers to an armored garbage truck in order to capture President Asher and his cabinet and hold them hostage in the White House's own protected bunker. Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, the Secret Service director (Angela Bassett) and a three-bird general (Robert Forster!) inform the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman) that -- probably due to his wise, genial persona -- he is now the acting president. So they gather around a U-shaped table and watch the action play out on monitors and what not, as every single cop and agent in the entire city is apparently mowed down, leaving no one for the inner sanctum to keep in contact with on the ground...except for one man. That's right, Mike gets wind of what's going down, hauls it to Pennsylvania Avenue, and starts railing on the baddies, soon becoming the only good guy left in the White House. So he finds the president's secure-channel cell phone (?) in the Oval Office, calls up the War Room, and becomes their only man left behind enemy lines -- though he doesn't work for them anymore, and don't take orders from no one, GOT IT?! Mike makes it his mission to first locate Asher's 12-year-old son, then rescue Asher himself before Kang can extract a secret code from the upper administration that will blow up the world or something. The problems you're likely to encounter as a viewer during these first 30 minutes of setup come in the form of suspending disbelief. It's not that we expect a good shoot-'em-up to make a ton of sense, but if you've seen any decent action movies before (a likely case if you're watching this one, right?), you will no doubt have some trouble accepting the premise that the military mechanisms put in place to protect the White House are designed to take a full 15 minutes to arrive. Or that the best-trained soldiers at the highest levels of defense have no idea how to effectively guard a single location, and instead hemorrhage blindly out into the path of automatic-weapon fire. Or that the government would adopt a nuclear-weapons fail-safe that you could also use to kill everyone in America if you can beat a five-digit code out of three people. Seriously, it's harder to hack a Gmail account. However, if you can either ignore the film's flimsiness or forgive it, you do end up with a pretty fun thrill ride. Olympus Has Fallen won't be vying for a spot in the Action Hall of Fame, but in the genre's current lukewarm climate, it's still a breath of fresh air.