Red and White House

Early 2013 hasn't shown much love for action movies. There are a couple of reasons for that. First up is the fact that audiences are sick of retro action stars who haven't accepted that they don't have the same level of cachet anymore. We've seen Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham and Arnold Schwarzenegger struggling against middling turnouts in what used to be their collective wheelhouse, all the good will from the violently fun Expendables series having apparently dried up. What action we have actually deigned to watch this year was largely franchise fare, with GI Joe getting fans to the cinema and not a whole lot else. But for some reason, people came out to see Olympus Has Fallen, directed by Antoine Fuqua and featuring Hollywood's most charismatic voice (Morgan Freeman), its sharpest chin (Aaron Eckhart), and its most dashing rogue (Gerard Butler). For the record, those are three major (and sometimes underappreciated) talents in one major motion picture.

Yippi-ki Yay.

Surprisingly, what's most interesting about Olympus Has Fallen's story is that it's not exactly original; in fact, Fuqua's film is the first of two "terrorists attack the White House" stories to be released this year, with Roland Emmerich's White House Down due out this summer. That's right, folks: just as 2012 featured dueling Snow White productions, Hollywood has declared war on Washington D.C. in 2013. On a typical day at the White House, President Benjamin Asher (Eckhart) is in a meeting with the Prime Minister of South Korea to discuss the rising tensions with the nation's aggressive neighbor to the north. What follows is most unexpected, as a sudden and violent terrorist attack captures Asher and several members of his staff, securing them in a bunker beneath 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and wiping out the shocked and vulnerable Secret Service in the process. While the Speaker of the House and acting President Allan Trumbull (Freeman) attempts to diplomatically handle the situation, he's got an asset on the ground: disgraced former Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Butler), a former special ops soldier who came to the aid of his fellow agents during the attack. With time running out and a dastardly terrorist plot taking shape, Banning might be all there is between us and nuclear holocaust.

Shoot first and ask questions later.

For Butler, it's a return to ass-kicking after a few years of playing dice with his acting career. While I won't disparage his talents - the man has the ability to play drama or comedy, action or romance at the drop of a hat - rarely do audiences seem to care about his movies unless he's killing others with impunity. People seem to enjoy seeing him as an honorable man who blows shit up (thanks to my friend Anne for that coinage) and that's certainly how Olympus Has Fallen succeeds, putting Butler and his fellow actors forward and letting them carry the story. Say what you will about the movie as a whole (and I will), but the film does a good job utilizing its cast, from the trio of stars to strong supporting turns by the likes of Angela Bassett, Rick Yune, Melissa Leo and Dylan McDermott, among a slew of others.

Rocking the bow tie.

Unfortunately that's about where the only bright spot of this movie lies. While the production values are decent, and the action scenes competent enough to keep your attention, what can't be ignored is just how STUPID the script and the plot are. While you certainly shouldn't expect that the amount of political savvy here would rival the stories of, say, The West Wing, but the inanity of the story is downright silly. Fighter jets lose to a hulking super carrier because they line up perfectly with the plane's mounted machine guns. The bad guy's plans hinge on the US President making the ABSOLUTE wrong decision, and when he does his secret servicemen barely put up a fight about the ignorance of procedure. And speaking of the men tasked with protecting the leader of the free world: when the enemy is advancing under the cover of smoke and firing machineguns and RPGs, standing out in the open to get gunned down is decidedly not decent military training. It's illogical, cringe-worthy idiocy like this that ruins the flow of Olympus, and a little more time penning a reasonable script wouldn't have prevented our hero from kicking ass. Instead we're issued a needlessly hyper-violent movie where everybody is so stupid that the director assumes his audience is as well, and that they'll enjoy two hours of mindless gunfights and blatant pro-US pandering.

Glad I'm not on the janitorial crew...

Normally I'd say something along the lines of turning off your brain for a good time, but while Olympus Has Fallen manages to be among the better action movies released this year, it's still pretty damned mediocre. Being a step up from the worst of Stallone, Statham and Willis is nothing to be proud of, and Fuqua has taken some serious missteps in the time since his Training Day height. If you really, REALLY need to see an action movie before Iron Man 3 comes out next month, then maybe you can stomach the bloody, masochistic silliness that is this newest blend of repetitive explosions and monosyllabic dialogue. But if you can wait for this on DVD - or even skip it entirely - then I recommend you do so. Strong cast aside, there's just not enough reason to pay full price for a ticket, especially when you can wait just a few weeks for loads of better options.

Left Hanging with Chad

We're past the halfway point for 2012, and approaching he zenith of an exceedingly divisive election season that has called out practically every hot-button topic that exists in its progression. Whether you identify as a Republican, Democrat, or "Other", you have to wonder whether this is the absolute best or absolute worst time for the west coast to send us an R-rated election-themed comedy, and one headlined by two of the more frenetic comedians in movies today to boot.

To be blunt, I'm not that big a fan of the leads in The Campaign. While I did like Zach Galifianakis in the Hangover series, I haven't seen much else, and I'm still not sure the actor can do much more than be an amusing co-star. And while Will Ferrell has had his moments, I cannot say that I find him funny more often than not. A GOOD film with these two would perfectly satirize the electoral process while giving us great laughs in the meantime. A BAD film would be full of scatological "humor", nonsensical leaps of logic and be a complete mockery of the US political system. Hmm, one of the screenwriters co-wrote The Other Guys, but he also wrote Land of the Lost. And the director is Jay Roach, of Austin Powers and Meet the Fockers fame. Things aren't looking good...

It's like I'm watching a John Edwards documentary...

That The Campaign does manage to eek out its fair share of laughs is probably the biggest surprise in this whole show. When Democratic North Carolina Congressman Cam Brady's (Ferrell) campaign for his unopposed fifth term in office is derailed by a scandal, he opens the field to Republican candidate Marty Huggins (Galifianakis). Huggins, an everyman small-town tour guide, has been approached and supported by corporate honchos intent on removing the "embarrassing" Brady from office. What follows is a massive battle, as Brady is as determined to retain the perks that come with his appointment as Huggins is to help the people of his district.

Not quite sure which one could eat the other...

The film is at least partially a commentary on the dirty side of politics, covering everything from smear campaigns, super PACs, negative advertising, and kicking the other guy whenever the opportunity arises. As the battle goes back and forth between Brady and Huggins, it's easy to re-imagine the situation featuring your local leaders. The film even does a fine job of satire in showing the seeming willingness of the loyal voters who more often than not seek inspiring quotes and buzz words over actual job performance. The candidates are shown to be fully aware of this, never promising anything beyond vague positives while pretending they're everybody's best friend. In truth, neither candidate is portrayed as either good or bad; Brady is a jaded career politician who early in his career had actually hoped to help change things, while Huggins wants to fix things now, but is in the pocket of big business.

And this is why you never see candidates near one another besides debates.

Of course, the filmmakers' efforts at satire cross the line a BIT too much, and while there are a few times when it creates the perfectly hilarious moment (as when Brady famously punches that baby in slo-mo), most of the time the result is more uncomfortable than actually being funny. Many of the actions characters take (and the public's response to them) are so flagrantly bizarre that it practically declares the election process a farce. That said, I wonder if there is anyone out there who thinks that the Brady/Huggins campaign looks like business as usual in their district. Suffice it to say, Roach seems to plaster the idea that every politician, no matter their intent, will eventually forget all about the people they're supposed to be representing. It might have seemed like a more humorous idea when written down on paper, but considering how seriously people take politics these days, it might have come off as darker than originally intended.

Don't let this man ever run your political career.

Farrell and Galifianakis are at their best pretty funny, but neither stretches from their standard creative zones here. Farrell is doing his George W. Bush SNL impression throughout the entire film, even using the exact same accent (as though all southerners sound exactly the same). And Galifianakis' relative lack of facial hair doesn't cover up the fact that his sub-intelligent character demeanor is in full effect. Fortunately, the leads have a good enough support cast to keep things interesting, from Jason Sudeikis as Brady's straight-arrow campaign manager to Dylan McDermott as a psycho hired to make Huggins "not suck so much." Dan Ackroyd and John Lithgow are decent as the big business Motch Brothers (a play on the real life Koch Brothers), but don't really get enough to do. And while I wish the film had found a bigger role for Jack McBrayer, they perfectly cast veteran scene-chewer Brian Cox as Huggins' disapproving father.

He looks like something on To Catch a Predator.

I was never all that high on the idea of The Campaign, and the final product pretty much proved my initial beliefs. There are some laughs, and the film as a whole will be more fondly remembered than such fare as The Dictator, or the absolute crap-fest that was last year's Bad Teacher. But while you might get some laughs out of The Campaign's script, this is a title that cannot find that perfect satirical balance. Different leads, or perhaps even better writing, could have made this more than just another mediocre comedic outing, but there's really no reason that justifies seeing this film in the theater. It'll be on DVD before this fall's elections, most likely, and if you're that hard up for a Will Ferrell comedy, there are a few excellent options available (like Stranger Than Fiction or The Other Guys) for rental instead. This won't be one of them.