"And now for something completely different"
The above, of course, should be pronounced with the best possible Monty Python accent. Today's blog entry is a movie review instead of anything about miniatures. My hope is that anyone reading it will be dissuaded from spending money on a bad movie and by doing so encourage Hollywood to make even more intelligence-insulting crap. The move is Olympus Has Fallen, and I agreed to see it partially out of obligation for a birthday celebration and partially because I remembered the screen presence of Morgan Freeman as the president in Deep Impact. While Freeman does a good job as the Speaker Of The House, acting as president since the president and vice president are unavailable, that alone is not enough to carry the movie on its own. It's basically Die Hard, without Bruce Willis. Spoilers below, as I list the numerous plot holes and other ridiculousness that I was unable to ignore.
As the movie opens, North Korea is rattling sabers again, and the South Korean ambassador arrives to meet with the president. During the meeting, a rogue transport plane enters DC restricted airspace and is challenged by a pair of what I think are F22 Raptors. Rather than responding to their hails, the cargo plane pops miniguns out of both sides and simultaneously destroys the interceptor jets who were conveniently positioned one either side of the plane at point blank range. The odds against this working are so astronomical that no "evil genius" would attempt it. Against military fighter jets, a lumbering cargo plane is going to get exactly one opportunity to down both planes before the superior firepower of the remaining ones, plus whatever else is available to intercept an authorized plane in DC airspace, blow it into tiny pieces. But no, both fighter jets are downed in the first barrage, no other aircraft can get there before it is strafing the White House, and the emergency surface to air missiles can't shoot it down either because it launches flares. Just ignore the fact that this is a close range target that isn't maneuverable enough to jink much, and could probably be hit by a well-aimed, unguided projectile like a cannon ball!
The next ridiculously unlikely occurrence is that the people meeting with the South Korean ambassador include (I think) the secretary of state and the vice president as well as the president himself, who are the three people who have the top-secret Cerberus codes. Assuming that there is such a top secret three code system, I'm pretty sure there would be an absolutely ironclad rule that those three people are never to be in the same place at the same time. That's Risk Management 101! With the White House under attack, the meeting moves to the panic room bunker underneath the White House, which is one of the only places that Cerberus codes can be entered. And for the record, apparently nobody bothered to do their homework on how to pronounce Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the ancient Greek underworld. It is pronounced ker-BEAR-ohs, not SER-ber-us!
Once in the bunker, it is revealed that about half of the South Korean ambassador's party are actually North Korean agents, and they know more about the functioning of top secret US Government stuff than most of the people in charge of the government. They kill the ambassador and his bodyguards, and take the rest of the party hostage, while special forces from outside capture the rest of the White House. Their hacker is able to instantly shut down all monitoring and surveillance, because of course a good hacker can Do Anything from a computer terminal. The only "good guy" left in the whole complex is our hero, a former Secret Service bodyguard armed only with a consumer-grade hand gun. Somehow he single-handedly kills ten or so terrorists with perfect head shots by waving his gun in their general direction and firing, while they are unable to hit him with a military assault rifle while in perfect (or at least decent) firing posture and looking through the sights.
Next, our intrepid hero makes his way through the dark, terrorist-infested White House to the Oval Office, where he opens a safe containing the president's emergency satellite phone. I can accept that cinematic drama requires him to have some kind of real-time communication with Morgan Freeman and company wherever they are, but the guy was transferred to a desk job 18 months previously. I have to change my password at work four times a year, and I'm supposed to believe that they never change the codes on a safe in the Oval Office, even when somebody who knows them leaves? Oh, he's also able to delete important files from a laptop in the Office (which would have been heavily full-disk encrypted anyway, making them useless without the key) and undo a fair amount of the Korean super-hacker's work even though he was never said to have any computer training other than a year and a half of a desk job at the treasury department.
Against the recommendations of Our Hero, the chair warmers decide to attempt a military intervention, flying 6 helicopters up to the White House to drop in from the roof. This fails miserably, of course, because the terrorists have gotten their hands on a "Hydra 6", a next-generation anti-air Gatling gun platform. Our Hero sees it and tries to warn them even though he would have never heard of a Hydra 6, and the military assure him that a single Hydra will not be able to take down all the helicopters. Once again, they are wrong, and the terrorists know more about the capabilities of top secret military technology than the guys whose job it is to know that. Other problems with this scene include animated bullet traces from the satellite view that the chair warmers are watching (as if they're playing a 1980's video game, basically), and the only mention of how the terrorist have one of these guns in the first place is "doesn't matter how they got it, they clearly have one."
Back in the bunker, the villain starts torturing people for their Cerberus codes, and the president valiantly orders them to give it because "they need all three, and they'll never get mine." By the end of the movie, of course, the super-hacker is able to crack the last code, and it's a complete surprise to everyone else that this was an option. The line is something like "that's impossible. It would take months to crack the Cerberus codes. ... Yes, but they only had to guess one." Of course, none of the three people charged with securing these codes, or the military bigshots in charge of them, had considered such a thing even though it's their job to secure the system. Reluctantly, I'm willing to give the movie a pass on the display of the code fixing one digit at a time as the cracking program tries to guess the code. Cryptography doesn't work that way, and you have no way of knowing how many of your digits are right as long as at least one is wrong, but that cinematic device is as old as Wargames, so I guess it's forgivable.
Eventually, Morgan Freeman shows a complete lack of backbone and the calculus of power, and accedes to the terrorists' demands, ordering US forces away from North Korean waters and the Korean border. OK, maybe a politician who didn't actually expect to be acting commander in chief would give such an order, but I don't believe that a five-star general, chief advisor, even if he was portrayed as a complete asshole, would pass the order down. A high-ranking general is going to understand that no one man, even a US president, is worth more than an entire country, or as it turns out when the drama thickens even more, two countries.
Speaking of the second country, what does this mighty Cerberus system do? It's a last-ditch failsafe that can disable an accidentally launched nuclear missile in mid flight. The codes can't be changed at NORAD, or even disabled at the silos, only from the presidential bunker where the terrorist and the codes just happen to be. And of course, what happens when you issue a Cerberus command to a missile? It doesn't disable itself, "eject the core", or anything simple like that, no. It detonates! And of course it will do so, even if it's still in the silo! Nobody thought of that when designing the system, and you don't even need NORAD to arm the missile first? Of course not, It Just Detonates. But not before giving you 5 minutes to countermand the order with a hideously complicated password that Our Hero can arrive just in time to enter as it's being read to him by one of the chair-warmers in the situation room. Of course, this can't happen until after the obligatory hand to hand fight with the archvillain who started it all.
Please, save your money or watch something else. The movie is terrible.
As the movie opens, North Korea is rattling sabers again, and the South Korean ambassador arrives to meet with the president. During the meeting, a rogue transport plane enters DC restricted airspace and is challenged by a pair of what I think are F22 Raptors. Rather than responding to their hails, the cargo plane pops miniguns out of both sides and simultaneously destroys the interceptor jets who were conveniently positioned one either side of the plane at point blank range. The odds against this working are so astronomical that no "evil genius" would attempt it. Against military fighter jets, a lumbering cargo plane is going to get exactly one opportunity to down both planes before the superior firepower of the remaining ones, plus whatever else is available to intercept an authorized plane in DC airspace, blow it into tiny pieces. But no, both fighter jets are downed in the first barrage, no other aircraft can get there before it is strafing the White House, and the emergency surface to air missiles can't shoot it down either because it launches flares. Just ignore the fact that this is a close range target that isn't maneuverable enough to jink much, and could probably be hit by a well-aimed, unguided projectile like a cannon ball!
The next ridiculously unlikely occurrence is that the people meeting with the South Korean ambassador include (I think) the secretary of state and the vice president as well as the president himself, who are the three people who have the top-secret Cerberus codes. Assuming that there is such a top secret three code system, I'm pretty sure there would be an absolutely ironclad rule that those three people are never to be in the same place at the same time. That's Risk Management 101! With the White House under attack, the meeting moves to the panic room bunker underneath the White House, which is one of the only places that Cerberus codes can be entered. And for the record, apparently nobody bothered to do their homework on how to pronounce Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the ancient Greek underworld. It is pronounced ker-BEAR-ohs, not SER-ber-us!
Once in the bunker, it is revealed that about half of the South Korean ambassador's party are actually North Korean agents, and they know more about the functioning of top secret US Government stuff than most of the people in charge of the government. They kill the ambassador and his bodyguards, and take the rest of the party hostage, while special forces from outside capture the rest of the White House. Their hacker is able to instantly shut down all monitoring and surveillance, because of course a good hacker can Do Anything from a computer terminal. The only "good guy" left in the whole complex is our hero, a former Secret Service bodyguard armed only with a consumer-grade hand gun. Somehow he single-handedly kills ten or so terrorists with perfect head shots by waving his gun in their general direction and firing, while they are unable to hit him with a military assault rifle while in perfect (or at least decent) firing posture and looking through the sights.
Next, our intrepid hero makes his way through the dark, terrorist-infested White House to the Oval Office, where he opens a safe containing the president's emergency satellite phone. I can accept that cinematic drama requires him to have some kind of real-time communication with Morgan Freeman and company wherever they are, but the guy was transferred to a desk job 18 months previously. I have to change my password at work four times a year, and I'm supposed to believe that they never change the codes on a safe in the Oval Office, even when somebody who knows them leaves? Oh, he's also able to delete important files from a laptop in the Office (which would have been heavily full-disk encrypted anyway, making them useless without the key) and undo a fair amount of the Korean super-hacker's work even though he was never said to have any computer training other than a year and a half of a desk job at the treasury department.
Against the recommendations of Our Hero, the chair warmers decide to attempt a military intervention, flying 6 helicopters up to the White House to drop in from the roof. This fails miserably, of course, because the terrorists have gotten their hands on a "Hydra 6", a next-generation anti-air Gatling gun platform. Our Hero sees it and tries to warn them even though he would have never heard of a Hydra 6, and the military assure him that a single Hydra will not be able to take down all the helicopters. Once again, they are wrong, and the terrorists know more about the capabilities of top secret military technology than the guys whose job it is to know that. Other problems with this scene include animated bullet traces from the satellite view that the chair warmers are watching (as if they're playing a 1980's video game, basically), and the only mention of how the terrorist have one of these guns in the first place is "doesn't matter how they got it, they clearly have one."
Back in the bunker, the villain starts torturing people for their Cerberus codes, and the president valiantly orders them to give it because "they need all three, and they'll never get mine." By the end of the movie, of course, the super-hacker is able to crack the last code, and it's a complete surprise to everyone else that this was an option. The line is something like "that's impossible. It would take months to crack the Cerberus codes. ... Yes, but they only had to guess one." Of course, none of the three people charged with securing these codes, or the military bigshots in charge of them, had considered such a thing even though it's their job to secure the system. Reluctantly, I'm willing to give the movie a pass on the display of the code fixing one digit at a time as the cracking program tries to guess the code. Cryptography doesn't work that way, and you have no way of knowing how many of your digits are right as long as at least one is wrong, but that cinematic device is as old as Wargames, so I guess it's forgivable.
Eventually, Morgan Freeman shows a complete lack of backbone and the calculus of power, and accedes to the terrorists' demands, ordering US forces away from North Korean waters and the Korean border. OK, maybe a politician who didn't actually expect to be acting commander in chief would give such an order, but I don't believe that a five-star general, chief advisor, even if he was portrayed as a complete asshole, would pass the order down. A high-ranking general is going to understand that no one man, even a US president, is worth more than an entire country, or as it turns out when the drama thickens even more, two countries.
Speaking of the second country, what does this mighty Cerberus system do? It's a last-ditch failsafe that can disable an accidentally launched nuclear missile in mid flight. The codes can't be changed at NORAD, or even disabled at the silos, only from the presidential bunker where the terrorist and the codes just happen to be. And of course, what happens when you issue a Cerberus command to a missile? It doesn't disable itself, "eject the core", or anything simple like that, no. It detonates! And of course it will do so, even if it's still in the silo! Nobody thought of that when designing the system, and you don't even need NORAD to arm the missile first? Of course not, It Just Detonates. But not before giving you 5 minutes to countermand the order with a hideously complicated password that Our Hero can arrive just in time to enter as it's being read to him by one of the chair-warmers in the situation room. Of course, this can't happen until after the obligatory hand to hand fight with the archvillain who started it all.
Please, save your money or watch something else. The movie is terrible.
Comments
Post a Comment