The most obvious comparison to make with Olympus Has Fallen is that it is Die Hard set in the White House. Although, the plot holes and implausibilities that litter the script in this movie are so numerous that they make that Bruce Willis action classic look like a documentary. You don't just need to suspend your sense of disbelief for it, you need to take it, wad it up into a tight little ball, and throw it as far away from you as possible. Ludicrous is too mild a word to describe it.
Before the end of the Cold War, Hollywood could use the Soviet Union whenever it needed a country to oppose the U.S.A.. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's tried out several countries in that role, but lately seems to have settled on North Korea as the go to bad guys and this movie continues that trend. This is probably down to a few factors. We fought them in a war once. They're not overtly defined by their religion, so it's not seen as politically incorrect to portray them as villains. Their leaders fit the stereotype of egotistical dictators to such a degree that they're almost caricatures. And perhaps most importantly, they're not a major market for Hollywood films, so that if they are offended, it won't affect Hollywood's bottom line as it would if the Chinese decided to boycott or ban a film.
The plot is simple enough. A group of the aforementioned North Koreans launch an attack on Washington D.C. and manage to take over the White House, holding the President and several members of his cabinet hostage in the bunker that lies below it. Fortunately for the President and the audience, former secret service agent, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler doing his best to hide his Scottish accent), manages to infiltrate the White House before it is sealed, where he is able to do his best Bruce Willis impersonation on the way to saving the country and the day.
There are too many ridiculous plot elements to name them all and to emphasize them too much would be to miss the point of the movie. The only point is to put Butler in situations where he can kick some serious terrorist ass for truth, justice and most importantly, the American way. To be fair, the action is well filmed and also quite violent and graphic, although mysteriously lacking blood and gore. People are shot in the head and torn apart by machine gun fire. Butler breaks more necks than I kept count and uses a knife, a pistol and other assorted weapons, along with his fists and feet. When he's in motion and you don't have to think about how stupid it all is, it does manage to achieve the lowest level of entertainment.
However, I have to mention a couple of the more blatant elements of stupidity in the script to give you an idea of the silliness of it all.
The terrorists, for example, are shown to be expert shots and quite professional during the takeover of the White House. They overwhelm the U.S. security forces, who are shown to be nearly incompetent in the process. Once Butler shows up though, they become as good of shots as the Stormtroopers on the Death Star, while he can't miss. Three of them with machine guns, firing through a wall, manage to miss him completely, while he is able to fire a single shot pistol, over his shoulder, while running away from them, through the same wall, and kill one of them.
Kang, the lead terrorist, needs to extract three codes from his prisoners so that he can activate the self-destruct mechanism on all of the nuclear missiles in the United States as they sit in their silos. Naturally, the codes he needs can't be changed, nor can they be overridden from the silos themselves, and no safety measures were taken during their construction to prevent the missiles from exploding before launch. To get the codes, he threatens two members of the cabinet in front of the President. Before the torture even really gets started, the President orders them to give Kang their codes because, as he says, "They'll never get mine." However, since the President has already shown that he can't stand to see other people get tortured, why doesn't Kang just keep going on them until the President gives him his code? And why does Kang wait so long before torturing the first person and then a few hours more before torturing the next?
There are other examples of silliness, but in the service of brevity, I'll refrain from mentioning them here. Suffice to say, if you played a drinking game where you took a drink every time something implausible happened, you'd be smashed within half an hour. Although, that might actually help you enjoy it.
Of course, this isn't the type of movie people go to watch because they want to think about it. It's the kind of movie people watch for the action and on that very base level, it manages to succeed. If that's what you're looking for, then you may enjoy this movie, but it definitely helps to watch it with a sense of humor. It's impossible to take seriously.
