While I sincerely hope that nothing like what occurs in Olympus Has Fallen ever takes place on American soil, I must admit that I like movies like this, and I really, really like this one.  Antoine Fuqua’s thriller is plausible, dramatic, horrifying, violent, cruel and heroic.  It’s everything a full-blooded thriller should be, and probably more.

Fuqua doesn’t hold back; this is no tame PG-13, let’s-not-offend-the-squeamish type of generic president-in-peril adventure.  Olympus Has Fallen is properly harsh, with villains who are downright villainous.  One way to judge a movie of this type, such as the James Bond series, is to examine its villains.  Here, the sinister North Korean dude who walks into the White House and then essentially destroys it, Kang, is as smart and ruthless as these meanies come.  Kang is portrayed by Rick Yune, who tried to turn James Bond into a popsicle in Die Another Day, so it’s no surprise that he has mayhem on his mind once again.

Gerard Butler is the intrepid Secret Service agent who, in the James Bond mode, must sneak into the wounded White House, rescue the president’s young son, ascertain the villains’ intentions and thwart them before doomsday erupts.  He is terrific, as is the supporting cast which includes Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell, Dylan McDermott, Melissa Leo, Cole Hauser and the aforementioned Yune.  The movie is smart, genuinely thrilling, harrowing and has its moments of humor as well.  It is a wonderful film.

I would have given it four stars, except for a little bit of cheesiness around the edges and one specific sequence, which I am going to discuss in detail.  An incursion effort is launched with helicopters, but the villains have installed a new tracking weapon atop the White House roof.  When the choppers approach the weapon tracks and shoots them down one by one.  Butler actually disables the thing with a rocket launcher, but he never tells anyone.  Another incursion using the same tactics could easily have been mounted and would succeed, except that the script forces Butler to keep quiet about his heroics (which is stupid, considering he describes everything else going on). He also never tells anyone about the traitor who helps Kang get into the most secure part of the most secure building in the world.

There are other quibbles one could make, of course, but the movie presents and handles this diabolical situation with aplomb and intelligence rare for this genre.  It presents a nightmare scenario that, because of North Korea’s increasing belligerence, is a little bit more believable than is comfortable.  Olympus Has Fallen is high-concept filmmaking at its finest, and perhaps the best thriller since the days of Die Hard and The Silence of the Lambs.  ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2.  28 March 2013.