Olympus Has Fallen
FilmDistrict | Release Date: March 22, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
41
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
16
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyMar 21, 2013
Korean-American actor and former model Yune (who played a similar role in "Die Another Day," the last Pierce Brosnan James Bond film) makes a colourful villain – handsome and insufferably assured, and also an unchivalrous sadist who kicks around the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo in a pageboy wig) as though she’s a hacky sack. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 21, 2013
Although the film's real-world credibility is shaky, it works on its own terms. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 21, 2013
It's that wonderful, totally unambitious yet satisfying thing, a really good movie. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesBill ZweckerMar 20, 2013
While Olympus Has Fallen breaks no major new ground in the political thriller genre, Fuqua has directed a sharp, very taut adventure that keeps you engrossed from start to finish. Read full review
67
Film.comJordan HoffmanMar 21, 2013
The action is the real star here, and it’s all good enough. It isn’t great – the aerial special effects are distractingly cheap – but at least there’s lots of it on display. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMar 20, 2013
Melissa Leo has some standout scenes as the secretary of defense, who gets pretty well beaten up for defying her captors, but others, such as Angela Bassett and Morgan Freeman, have little to do but bite their lips and look tense from the confines of their command posts. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMar 21, 2013
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. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineMar 19, 2013
The film spends its first act establishing a flimsy emotional groundwork before gleefully taking a sledgehammer to it just seconds into act two. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonGuy LodgeApr 29, 2013
The thrills and the effects are cheap, but this is in hard-driving, good-humoured command of its own silliness. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfMar 23, 2013
A deep supporting cast brings its A-game to the ridiculous dialogue. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanMar 21, 2013
Perhaps every generation gets the movie stars it deserves. “Olympus” has quite a bit to say about the current state of our country. Intentions aside, not all of it is entirely flattering. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMar 19, 2013
Generates a fair amount of tension and produces the kind of nationalistic outrage that rock-ribbed Americans will feel in their guts. Read full review
60
Village VoiceScott FoundasMar 19, 2013
A Red Dawn for the Tea Party era, Olympus Has Fallen is 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. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayMar 22, 2013
Olympus Has Fallen at least possesses the frisson of timeliness amid otherwise hoary action-movie cliches. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithMar 21, 2013
This unapologetic B-movie at least keeps the action rolling, and the time goes by quickly. To put it another way, I’d rather see Gerard Butler stab a terrorist in the neck than flirt with Katherine Heigl. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigMar 21, 2013
This is for those who like their political thrillers far-fetched, far-reaching and filled with pretty people. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeMar 21, 2013
A North Korean terrorist may be responsible for taking the president hostage, but it’s Bulgarian-made CGI that does the most damage in Antoine Fuqua’s intense, ugly, White-House-under-siege actioner Olympus Has Fallen. Read full review
50
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMar 21, 2013
For all the bursts of blood, the gunplay and execution-style head-shots that punctuate scores of deaths, it’s hard to see Olympus Has Fallen (Secret Service code) as much more than another movie manifestation of a first-person shooter video game. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTom RussoMar 21, 2013
Butler serves the cause well, considering. Think that cause is a thankless one? Shhh, don’t tell Secret Service agent Channing Tatum or president Jamie Foxx, headed your way in June with, yes, “White House Down.” Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanMar 20, 2013
The countdown-to-Armageddon structure generates almost no tension, but Olympus Has Fallen does have lots of squalidly bloody hand-to-hand action, all of which is so pulpy and standardthat the film actually makes you grateful for the presence of Gerard Butler, gnashing his teeth in the Bruce Willis role. Read full review
42
The PlaylistDrew TaylorMar 21, 2013
The movie is so apolitical; there could have been a nice slant to the movie, about how both sides of the aisle could get together to kick out these Korean terrorists. Instead, it remains totally void. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 19, 2013
Part of the weirdness of this film lies in the fact that the tense North Korean situation in the real world gives it no realism or satirical edge, or prophetic authority of any kind. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid DenbyMar 25, 2013
The movie isn’t a desecration, but it’s action filmmaking, not America, that needs to be reborn. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghMar 21, 2013
If you’re just going to rip off the action movies of yore, why not rip off more of the good stuff? Read full review
35
NPRIan BuckwalterMar 21, 2013
Feels from start to finish like a throwback to the action cinema and military thrillers of decades past. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMar 25, 2013
Olympus Has Fallen is a disgusting piece of work, but it certainly hits its marks — it makes you sick with suspense. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasMar 20, 2013
Nearly everything that happens in Olympus Has Fallen is ludicrous, yet because the fate of the president and the nation hangs in the balance, the crisis is treated with the gravitas of Paul Scofield at the West End. Read full review
20
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 21, 2013
It may be too much to ask for anything more, but, on the other hand, if you’re going to go to the trouble of pretending to blow up the White House, you might also want to pretend that something was at stake. Read full review
10
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleMar 21, 2013
[Antoine Fuqua] gives in to terrible instincts here, flirting with overwrought patriotism, one too many laugh lines amid numerous characters being shot in the head, and a general chaos-inspired editing technique all too rampant in today's action cinema. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 21, 2013
Olympus Has Fallen is no fun at all. To the contrary, it soon grows tedious, odious and oppressive. Read full review
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