This movie is not nearly as silly as I thought it would be.
Which is not to say that it isn’t silly. It is, wonderfully so. It’s an action movie where large portions of the White House get alternately shot up and blown up, and where they randomly make up super secret military technologies just to try to ratchet the stakes up an itty bitty bit more. Where the protagonist literally waits until the glowing red countdown until doomsday has reached 00:03 before entering the abort code.
See, if it was a truly silly movie, he would have waited until 00:01.
Ultimately, Olympus Has Fallen is like political Die Hard. Particularly the first movie, when it was a bit grittier and darker and slightly less quippy. And this one is less quippy than your average Die Hard. And since the protagonist is special forces instead of a cop, he stabs people in the brain and snaps necks instead of shooting and punching.
The thing I liked most about the movie, actually, is that a few major plot points actually surprised me. I won’t spoil those for you, but I really liked it.
Gerard Butler is excellent as the aforementioned neck-snapping brain-stabbing special forces secret service guy. Morgan Freeman was very Morgan Freeman, as you’d expect from him. I wish the real Speaker of the House was even a thousandth that awesome. And I’d like to give a special shout-out to Melissa Leo as the most badass Secretary of Defense ever seen in a movie.
I’d definitely recommend this one if you like action movies.