I had a few days off recently and so was able to view one of the first screenings of the political action thriller Olympus Has Fallen, starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman, who plays the Speaker of the House and Acting President during the crisis.  I’m sure I’m not giving anything away if you’ve seen the commercial preview, if I tell you that the Olympus in question is the White House.

During a visit by the Prime Minister of South Korea, the White House is attacked by a group of, you guessed it, North Korean commandos, in a daring daylight raid.  Many Secret Service agents and Marines are killed, and high ranking cabinet officials are taken hostage, as is the President, played by Aaron Eckhart.  The leader of the raid is Kang, played by Korean-American actor Rick Yune, ironically born in Washington, DC.  Kang’s motive appears to be related to the unification of Korea, and a long-standing grievance over America’s “interference” in the country’s civil war.  As always, there is a far more sinister motive that is revealed only near the end of the movie.  It is up to the hero of the movie, and last man standing, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), to thwart this plot and save America.

I add this note of sarcasm because the patriotic symbolism, especially around the American flag, is laid on quite thick.  But if you strip that away, it’s a pretty good action/thriller movie, and timely considering the noises coming from the Korean peninsula recently.  If you overlook the numerous improbabilities in the film, the most glaring of which is the ponderous amount of time it takes the US military to respond to the initial attack, you’ll have a great time cheering on the hero as he punches, shoots, and stabs his way through all the bad guys to save the day.

I’m not normally a fan of cop movies, but I have to say that End of Watch was not only the best cop movie I’ve seen, but one of the best movies I’ve seen in many years, of any kind (trailer). The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as Los Angeles police officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala.  After stumbling upon and interfering with the activities of a Mexican cartel, they become targets for assassination.

This movie is made to appear as if it has been shot mostly with the handheld camera one of the characters was carrying, giving it that homemade POV (point of view) feel. Only occasionally would it revert to the usual 3rd person storyteller. The action and the dialogue were raw, while the quiet moments were sweet, funny, and very human. I found myself carried along and carried away with the characters as if they were real people; their love, laughter, adrenalin, horror, fear, grief, and sorrow. I can’t recommend this movie highly enough.

Erich Maria Remarque’s book has been touted as the greatest war novel of all time.  I would say it is more correct to call it the greatest ANTI-war novel of all time.  The story is told by Paul Baumer, a young German who enlists with his classmates under pressure from their schoolmaster.  He recounts the weeks of training under a martinet of a corporal who seemed to take special delight in harrassing them.  As arduous as this is, it is nothing compared to the horrors that Paul and his friends witness and suffer at the front.  In fact, the book begins with Paul and other members of his squad visiting a comrade in hospital who had lost his leg.  As much as they care for him, they are all eyeing a pair of British flying boots belonging to their sick friend.  They know it’s unseemly to mention it in front of him, but among themselves openly discuss the boots, saying, even if he does survive, what use would they be to him with one leg?  In the end, he does die and the the boots pass to one of the remaining squad.

This novel is a soldier’s story.  It could have been told by any man in any army on any side.  The endless waiting, the bombardments, the attacks and counter-attacks.  There is a fierce loyalty to those in his small unit.  The larger goals of the generals and politicians have no meaning for the ordinary soldier.  While they must follow orders, their only real interest is in keeping themselves and their buddies alive.  Paul describes his state of mind and that of the men around him; their going mad under the endless bombardments, their reluctance to speak of the terrible things they witness, their alienation from their previous ‘normal’ lives.  All those things that we today would describe as post-traumatic stress.  As tragic as the events are in this book, they are nothing compared to the fact that, only ten years after this book was published, 1929, the world was back at it on an even more devastating scale.