“When our flag falls, our nation will rise.”  Even the tag line is made to pump (clap) you up.  And Olympus Has Fallen delivers the goods for anyone who wants to fist-pump and shout “ooh-RAH!” at a movie screen.  Well, you can shout that anytime, but here it’s actually appropriate.  Probably not so much during Silver Linings Playbook.

Director Antoine Fuqua brings the tension and realism he brought to Training Day and the shoot-em-up coolness from The Replacement Killers (an underrated gem).  First time writers Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt are great at cool Sorkin-esque dialogue but do get mired in cliches.  However, an action flick without cliches is like a horror movie without a surprise twist.  Sure, it can be done.  But nowadays it’s a comfortable groove we all come to expect.  And if you let Olympus Has Fallen wash over you, you’ll get that same comfy feeling.  Maybe not the catharsis the filmmakers were aiming for, but damn it it’s not an enjoyable ride.

Hunky, suave President (Aaron Eckhart).  Gorgeous First Lady (Ashley Judd).  Adorably nerdy First Son (Finley Jacobsen, Marley & Me).  A picture-postcard perfect First Family.  But one icy night things go horribly wrong, leaving the President a widow and his favorite Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) a mess.  Cut to 18 months later, and the White House is taken over by a crazy North Korean splinter group intent to reunite Korea by any means necessary.  And when I say that, I mean killing anyone standing in their way, including the President.  Banning — who has been reassigned to the Treasury Department next door — manages to get inside the White House.  Can he save the day?  Um, action movie = happy ending, so don’t get yourself too worried about the outcome here.

Like it’s brother-from-another-mother Independence Day, Olympus Has Fallen has all the shots that are supposed to tug at the heartstrings of any red-blooded American.  A tattered flag riddled with bullet holes, tumbling through the air to (gasp!) land on the ground.  Bodies of servicemen littering the grounds of the White House.  It’s shocking, but not everything feels like a thrill ride.  The Washington Monument crumbling after an airplane full of Bad Guys nicks it is a scene that even now echoes too much of the 9/11 tragedy to sit comfortably, and instead feels a bit like a cheap shot.

Even with that, the effects in Olympus Has Fallen are amazing, and somewhere out there Roland Emmerich is tipping his hat.  Olympus torches the White House with an almost casual aplomb, and unlike Emmerich’s Independence Day, we get to see the big house get torn apart bit by bit.  CGI and real-time FX form a believable bit of mass destruction, even though the logistics aren’t exactly kosher.  Hey, if you’re expecting a how-to manual on storming the White House, you’ve gotta look elsewhere.  Why not ask Homeland Security?  I’m sure they’d love to help you with your plans.

Gerard Butler does an outstanding job of playing the badass who is gonna singlehandedly take on the Bad Guys and win.  What, like you didn’t know how this story was gonna play out?  C’mon.  As a hostage, Eckhart’s President isn’t given much to do, but he grimaces well.  Morgan Freeman, the guy in all the commercials that starts out as Speaker of the House and ends up Acting President during this crisis?  Well, I love me some Morgan Freeman, but he’s not really in this much either.  It’s the Gerard Butler show, as anyone who’s ever seen an action film should be able to figure out.  But there is a delightful bit of magic outside of all the mayhem.  And that’s  Melissa Leo, who is amazing as big-shot hostage/Secretary of Defense Ruth McMillan.  In fact, she’s so good I had to take a moment during the film to simply acknowledge her awesomeness in this role.  It pulled me out of the story for a moment, but her performance is totally worth it.

After all the smoke clears and the wizbang climax is reached, there’s the usual inspirational speech about how cool we all are because we’re Americans.  But since I’ve heard this song and dance many times over, I couldn’t help but giggle a little (and want to shout “today we celebrate OUR Independence Day!”)  Olympus Has Fallen will probably become a big Fourth of July film, and it’s a perfect double-feature with Independence Day.  But ‘til the swamplike humidity of a DC area summer hits us all, kick back and get amped with a little fireworks pre-game.  Amuuuuurica!