So I got sick of indies and obscure old movies and wanted to see something easy on the brain, something Hollywood, filled with action and eye-candy. Olympus Has Fallen seemed to fill the bill.
Overall, a decent mid-level action flick of the type Lionsgate seems to revel in. The opening attack on the White House by sinister North Koreans (and are North Koreans the only people left who can be villains in Hollywood these days? Other than home-grown right-wing extremists a'la White House Down?) is the movie's strongest sequence. You just hate these bastards who are shooting up Washington and can't wait to see them humbled by Gerald Butler in spectacular fashion.
This may only be something that bothers me. Confession time. My favorite book, I mean absolute favorite, even more than the Song of Ice and Fire series, is Richard Rhode's Pulitzer Prize winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I've read it at least five times and I recommend that everyone else in the world read it at least once. The book uses the creation of the A-bomb to take the reader on a journey through science and history beginning with the discovery that an atom has a nucleus right out to the destruction of Nagasaki.
Along the way you learn exactly how an A-bomb works (and in the equally amazing sequel, Dark Sun, you learn how the Hydrogen Bomb, the bigger, badder brother of the A-bomb was invented and developed. As well as a lot about soviet spying because apparently the development of the H-bomb wasn't enough to fill 700 pages. )
Olympus Has Fallen. The McGuffin of this picture, what the terrorists are after, is the Cerberus Code. This is a system that allows the US Military to self-destruct an ICBM that has been launched at an enemy in the event we change our minds about that nuclear war at the very last second. The evil North Koreans are planning on self destructing all of America's missiles in their silos, triggering their nuclear warheads and causing a nuclear apocalypse.
K-9 The Widowmaker. Harrison Ford, in an amazing performance as a Russian sub captain with a bum nuclear reactor, must push his crew to make the ultimate sacrifice to stop the reactor from melting down. If they don't, the meltdown will set off the nuclear bombs on the missiles aboard the sub possibly triggering World War Three.
The Peacemaker. George Clooney and Nichole Kidman have to stop a Serbian terrorist from detonating the atomic trigger of a hydrogen bomb at the UN. Clooney and Kidman capture the bomb and have to deactivate it by opening it up and prying out one of the explosives tiles that surround the atomic core with Clooney's Leatherman.
Atomic trigger? Glad you asked.
Here's how an atomic bomb works. Certain elements, Uranium 253 (which is an isotope of Uranium with fewer neutrons than the more common U238) and Plutonium are called "fissionable materials." Pack too much of the stuff into one place and you get a "chain reaction." (Also a 1996 Keanu Reeves picture which, oddly enough, concerns cold hydrogen fusion.)
You make a chain reaction by splitting an atom of Plutonium or U235 with a neutron moving at the proper speed. This is called fission. When that first atom splits, it releases two neutrons and some energy. If the atoms of the material are packed too close together. those two emitted neutrons then split two more atoms, which release four neutrons which split eight atoms releasing... well, you see where this is going. Geometric progression leading to boom.
A mass of fissionable material large enough to cause a chain reaction and blow the hell up is called a "critical mass." For the purposes of our discussion, you assemble a critical mass by taking a sub critical sphere of fissionable material then implode it, squeeze it down with explosives, until it is much smaller and becomes a critical mass which then explodes.
To get that unimaginable pressure and heat, a fission bomb is used as a trigger to start the fusion reaction.
The Peacemaker got that. Some missiles with H-bombs on them are stolen by terrorists, then recovered halfway through the movie by George Clooney. Unfortunately, the thieves make off with one of the atomic triggers, a small atomic bomb powerful enough to take out the UN and a good chunk of Manhattan. Our heroes chase it down and recover it inside a church. With the timer counting down, it's disarm the bomb time.
Here's where The Peacemaker makes its only mistake. Clooney and Kidman get the cover off the bomb to reveal the core. The core is a ball of plutonium surrounded by precisely shaped explosive tiles (called lenses) connected to special micro-second detonators all hooked together with wires of the exact same length.
Kidman gets this and pries out one of the explosive tiles to throw the implosion off kilter. Getting the beast out of there proves quite difficult and takes her until there's just enough time for her and Clooney to throw themselves out a stained glass window and into the street before it goes boom.
Digging out that tile gives the scene suspense, but was utterly unnecessary. We see seven tiles visible as well as the wires leading to the trigger. (Strangely, no detonators are visible but they could be using a laser detonation system and fiber-optic cable.) Whatever the case, all she had to do was cut one, two, or better yet, all seven of those wires. Cut the wires, those tiles don’t explode, asymmetrical implosion, no critical mass and no atomic reaction.
But still close enough. I mean they knew enough to make the McGuffen a nuclear trigger and were able to defeat the bomb by producing an asymmetrical implosion. And for all I know Kidman's character was worried that cutting a detonator wire might trigger the bomb and that particular line of exposition got edited out. So I give The Peacemaker a 9.5 on the ATOMIC CRED scale. Good job, guys.
I know why they did it, one of the central tenets of screenwriting is to up the ante. They wanted to make the story bigger than just the fate of those men on the sub so they stapled on a have to save the world element to the plot. Big mistake that was utterly unnecessary. The film was as suspenseful and engaging as anything I've ever seen even without the ante being upped. Sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone. ATOMIC CRED: 7. (Points lost for the ante-upping subplot. Otherwise, a 10 for an extremely well-researched and executed reactor meltdown.)
Olympus has Fallen makes the same mistake as K-9 only on a grander scale. The idea that by simply exploding a missile in its silo (and the missiles aren't stored fueled, by the way) would produce implosions symmetric enough to set off the atomic triggers which would then cause a thermonuclear reaction is beyond laughable (and probably the reason the film failed at the box office. I can see legions of viewers getting up and demanding their money back with atomic incredulity as the stated reason.)
Also, if a Korean terrorist knew that self-destructing all the warheads in their silos would trigger nuclear Armageddon, why the hell didn't any of the military experts who know what the terrorists are after and are watching the whole thing go down from the war room figure it out? Once again, poorly-researched ante-upping hurts the movie. ATOMIC CRED: 0.
But then again, who cares? Gerald Butler tells the bad guy he's going to stick a knife in his brain in the middle of the third act then does so ten minutes later. Set-up, payoff.
Good enough for me.