Somewhere along the line, it may occur to you that Babak Najafi’s sequel to 2013’s president-in-peril pic Olympus Has Fallen is a sly attack on America masquerading as a celebration of same. It’s more than the one-man-army absurdity of aging security chief Gerard Butler as he winningly fights the war on terrorists. It’s more than the starry-eyed devotion of his pregnant wife as she tells him, “You go and do what you have to do and we will be right here when you get back.” All that might be satire by exaggeration, or it might just be thuddingly sincere. But there are little things, like a man explaining his superhuman stamina by saying he’s made of “bourbon and bad choices.” Or lecturing a bad guy on how America is an idea and not a man even as he’s trying to rescue the president. And there are bigger things, like a bad guy who is basically a good American capitalist (except he’s from somewhere else), agitating the market in order to create demand for his product. Granted, his product is arms, and agitating the market means fostering political instability. But hey, business is business. And as he notes, he’s never come after America — at least, not until America killed his daughter on her wedding day via drone strike. He may plan to chop off the president’s head with a sword, but he’s no religious extremist. He’s a grieving father. In any other story, he’d be the hero, possibly played by Liam Neeson. But since he’s coming after us, well...America, heck yeah. Anyway, it’s something to think about while you wait for the shooting to stop and the credits to roll. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
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