Olympus Has Fallen Reviews
Top CriticThe thrills and the effects are cheap, but this is in hard-driving, good-humoured command of its own silliness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
This ludicrous actioner strives to be as loud, violent, and patriotic as possible.
Fuqua doesn't deliver on what he has set up.
Olympus Has Fallen is a disgusting piece of work, but it certainly hits its marks - it makes you sick with suspense.
The carnage is cruel and crude.
A typical slab of Hollywood action in which the White House crumbles under attack, the American flag is tattered and tossed aside by baddies, and clichés rise like gods.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
'Olympus Has Fallen is just too much of a pale 'Die Hard' ripoff.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/5
... the action is often not unengaging, and Butler's better at swinging for faux Bruce Willis ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Given the premise's essential absurdity, it's almost embarrassingly entertaining.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
"Olympus Has Fallen" goes through plenty of familiar motions, but does them well enough that it gets away with it. There's a reason movies like this die hard.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
The film is a second-rate "Air Force One" mashed up with a third-rate "Die Hard," with Gerard Butler striving mightily to be charismatic as the One Man Who Can Save the Day.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
"Olympus Has Fallen" at least possesses the frisson of timeliness amid otherwise hoary action-movie cliches.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
It's a solid, simple, more-bang-for-our-buck entertainment that doesn't ask us to think.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A nitwit extravaganza that makes you long for the intellectual depth of Independence Day.
"Olympus Has Fallen" is everything an audience nostalgic for the Steven Seagal killfests of the '90s expects and deserves.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Sadly, Mr. Butler lacks the wit and the range to convey anything other than grouchy belligerence, and the script, by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, seems intent on squandering opportunities to be clever or interesting.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
This is for those who like their political thrillers far-fetched, far-reaching and filled with pretty people.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
While Gerard Butler is no Bruce Willis, his Mike Banning is a better facsimile of John McClane than the guy Willis is pretending to play these days.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
"Olympus" has a strictly director-for-hire vibe; anyone with access to a Roland Emmerich movie or two (namely "Independence Day") and a mad-libbed action script could have churned out something similar.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
The movie makes up in adrenaline what it lacks in brains.
Any semblance of seriousness and verisimilitude suggested by the marketing campaign is quickly forgotten once director Antoine Fuqua's enjoyably tacky Die Hard-on-the-Potomac gets under way.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It all goes down shockingly well, even if Butler lacks the sarcastic wit of a Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger and even as the film keeps upping the eye-rolling quotient with cartoon characters.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Olympus Has Fallen is about as satisfying an action thriller as can be hoped for, with an irresistible premise and nothing but follow-through all the way to the finish.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Fuqua knows exactly how to pump up a straightforward script from first-time scribes Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Pop jingoism isn't easy to stir once you've established a vibe that's so deflating.
If you have an uncle who hasn't seen a movie since "Taken," he's gonna' love this one.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
The picture is basically a ground-based version of "Air Force One" with a much higher body count.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
While the storyline and dialogue are frequently predictable, "Olympus Has Fallen" succeeds largely due to Butler's believablity as a Secret Service agent.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Cut past the pic's superficial patriotism, and the message is ironically clear: Never outsource your visual effects when a domestic shop will do.
There's no reason to overthink this. Just leave your brain at the lobby and enjoy 2013's most entertaining thriller yet.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Directed by Antoine Fuqua with his usual slam-bang, cutthroat aggression but with almost nothing in the way of surprise or genuine, organic suspense.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Pretty ridiculously entertaining-or at least entertainingly ridiculous-for long stretches, dulled only by the realization that there are many parts of the country where this will play as less than total farce.
Generates a fair amount of tension and produces the kind of nationalistic outrage that rock-ribbed Americans will feel in their guts.
