Better than expected

Yesterday I saw the Den of Thieves trailer and it got me to thinking about Gerard Butler and his career.

I never saw Olympus Has Fallen or London Has Fallen, but I knew they were legitimate hits for him. Apparently OHF made $170 million and LHF made over $200 million. So I figured what the hell, I'll bust a double-feature and see what they're all about.

Olympus Has Fallen is actually a really solid action film. It's a Die Hard knock-off, but it's one of the good ones. You know how you have Die Hard on a bus (Speed), Die Hard on a ship (Under Siege), Die Hard on a mountain (Cliffhanger), etc. Well this is Die Hard in a White House.

The action is hard-R, with dudes getting stabbed in the throat, being shot at point blank range and getting the shit kicked out of them. Butler plays a Secret Service agent who happens to be an ex-Army Ranger and he's convincing as a bad ass. The scene where the terrorists launch their attack on Washington and take over the White House is very well done and genuinely thrilling stuff.

The film is also shot well enough that I got curious about who directed it and it turns out it's Antoine Fuqua. That really surprised me, but when I saw that I was like, oh, okay, no wonder it's actually pretty good.

So I finished OHF and then rolled right into London Has Fallen. It's an okay sequel to the first film but nothing more than that. The director--Babak Najafi, who I had never heard of--seems to have a good eye for visuals and knows how to frame a shot, but the story wasn't especially interesting, the action is more implausible than the first film and it just altogether feels like a lesser movie than its brother. It's not bad if you're just looking for mindless action, but don't expect a lot of satisfaction dramatically.

I would give OHF a 7.5. LHF I'd probably give a 6 or 6.5.

From what I read earlier, there's going to be a third entry into the franchise that's supposed to go into production this year, Angel Has Fallen. We'll see how that goes.