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As wretched a decade as it otherwise was, the ’90s produced some damn fine action movies. I’m reminded of this fact by Olympus Has Fallen, a surprisingly hard-hitting and hard-R action movie whose premise fits squarely into the category of “why the hell hasn’t this been done before? Specifically in the ’90s.” It’s not great – frankly it’s a bit of a mess – but it’s a throwback to greatness and as such earns my affection, like a child dressing like his older brother who died in the accident we don’t talk about. I won’t love him much more, but I like that he tried.

Olympus Has Fallen concerns the plight of not-scottish-honest, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), an ex-etcetera hardcase who finds himself the fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench, the pain in the ass, in a terrorist-overrun White House. The President is a hostage (Aaron ‘The Chin’ Eckhart), the villain’s foreign and the odds are not on his side.

That sounds like an awesome premise because it is, and the execution of said White House overrunning is an absolute joy; intense, wantonly violent and directed with real weight and sadistic glee by Training Day-helmer, Antoine Fuqua. It’s quite unsettlingly right-wing in place, especially in its depictions of most North Koreans as absolute fruit-and-nutcakes, but that was just part of its retro charm for me. After this and the remake of Red Dawn, North Koreans seem to be today’s equivalent of the Ruskies or Eurobastards of old.

It’s just a shame the film becomes a bit of a visual shambles after the first act. The action’s well choreographed and the sound design is joyfully crunchy but it’s near-ruined by so much of the film’s action taking place not only in darkness, but in shaky-cam’ed darkness. This not only blurs the sense of location, making each dark room of the White House look the same, but it deadens the action too. This shooting style often makes sense if the director’s trying to sweep sloppy stunt coordination under the carpet or squeeze a 12A by underplaying the violence’s visual impact, but it’s especially baffling here because this stuff’s good. Hard-15 good! There’s fucks and blood aplenty so turn the lights on, take the camera away from the guy with tremens and let us enjoy it, movie.

The other problem is that this is a movie we’ve all seen before. Now don’t get me wrong, the fact that this is a “Die-Hard in a…” movie is, for me, the core of its appeal. I love these things. Air Force One, Under Siege, Cliffhanger – you make ’em, I’ll watch ’em – and it’s been years since we’ve seen a decent attempt at a Die Hard movie, both Lockout and A Good Day To Die Hard showing up dead on arrival. The problem is, this isn’t like Die Hard, this is Die Hard. Certain plot beats are to be expected but this movie plunders so comprehensively from the original Die Hard that it barely seems legal.

– spoilers –

For example, the hero is having relationship troubles with his wife at the start of the film. I know, I know, that’s a pretty common trope, so how about these? The smart-suited villain starts his plan by shooting a middle-aged asian man in the head. The villain needs a series of codes, having his computer whiz hack the ones he can’t get. The hero has a radio to the good guys, who consist of an grey-haired prick and a sage black man. The villain and the hero trade barbs over the radio and the hero trumps the villain’s book-smarts with swearing and taunting him about how many of his men he’s killed. The hero sneaks around the inner tunnels of the building, narrowly avoiding blindly-fired bullets whilst doing so. In a show of bravado, the grey haired prick sends some swat men to their deaths despite the hero’s pleas that it’ll get them killed. The hero meets a villain who pretends to be a good guy, and they chat while having a smoke. A plan by the good guys involving helicopters goes south. The hero narrowly avoids a massive roof explosion by jumping off said roof. The villain’s original demands are just there to cover up an alternate scheme. At his lowest moment, the hero picks glass from his body whilst on the radio to the sage black man. The villains plan to use an explosion to fake their own death. The hero reconciles his marriage with his wife surrounded by ambulances. That’s taking imitation beyond flattery and into The Talented Mr Ripley territory.

Plus, it’s all shot so flatly, with mostly digital blood, and a crippling lack of charisma in the script. The structure’s all there, the plot beats are all there – ripped off wholesale but present and correct all the same – the screenplay just needed a once over from a Joss Whedon; a dialogue guy. All the archetypes are in place, they’re just not given anything characterful or fun to say. So it’s a rote copy of Die Hard, only with less personality. So why bother, right?

But I did still like it. The premise is bombastic, exploited well, and as long as you lower those expectations you’ll walk away happy enough. I guess it’s just endemic of the PG-13 toothless era of action flicks that a few Fucks and some decently vicious gunshots to the head are enough to squeak a recommendation out of a film that would’ve been laughed out of cinemas in the ’90s.

It’s a bittersweet pleasure really, because what this movie did above all else was just remind me of stuff I miss. I miss blood-packs. I miss people dropping f-bombs like they were about to die or something – because they were! I miss movies that knew kids were going to find a way to see them anyway and never blunted their teeth to reach that more ‘lucrative’ younger rating. Olympus Has Fallen is certainly a step towards that cherished ’90s style, even if only a baby step, so if you have the money to spare why not check it out. Or just watch Die Hard again. Or Speed. Or Point Break. Or Die Hard 2. Or Terminator 2. Or Con Air. Or Cliffhanger. Or Air Force One. Or The Rock.

God, I miss the ’90s.

(and yes I know Die Hard was ’88)

By ‘eck, the young don’t know they’re born. Billy Liar is 50 this year but he’s been 19 forever. The original novel by Keith Waterhouse has been adapted into a perpetually performed play, a film, a TV series and a musical, not to mention numerous references in poems, songs and various other forms of pop culture. Why has the story endured so much? Well, it’s at once charmingly simple and emotionally complex, moralistic but cheeky, hilarious but bleak, and a character study that so comprehensively dissects not just one man’s near-psychopathy, but also the passive idlings of youth.

Bizarrely, the film reminds me a lot of Spring Breakers. Granted, there are marginally less tits and Franco in Billy Liar, but even half a century apart they’re both savage depictions of the reckless lengths the young will go in order to escape the mundanity of their lives and reach the idealised paradises sold to them wholesale by their cultural heroes. In Liar, Billy constantly casts off his lot as “just ordinary folk” by losing himself in dreams of being a war hero, a statesman, a man the elder generations might consider of worth. In Breakers, it’s the MTV-packaged dream of Spring Break Forever. In both films the young are pinned to their frustrating lives like an insect to a board, both flailing wildly to try and fly away.

Both films are also snapshots of their generations. Billy Liar was part of the new wave of kitchen sink dramas – a niche of naturalistic ‘just plain folk’ filmmaking that exploded in the 60s – which placed the action right in your nan’s front room. Established new wave director John Schlesinger confidently conjures scenes of working class Yorkshire, old buildings being torn down to make way for the new, Billy’s oblivious scampering towards self-destruction, and (especially when 60s starlet Julie Christie’s onscreen) the blossoming sexuality of the age found in dance halls and fumblings in the park – all of which signify the rise of a new generation, the kids who never fought a war, the progeny of the swaggering 60s, impatient and hungry. Billy works in an undertakers but, typical of the young, it’s not death he fears, but life.

And the life that awaits him as a local of Stradhoughton is depicted in a number of hilarious and bleak ways, whether it’s a hoard of mums celebrating the opening of a new supermarket with an expectant glee bordering on the cultish, or Billy’s nan, a rambling, ignored little life with nothing but a cosy chair to her name. The kitchen sink drama has always suffered from unfair accusations of being quaint, and life in Billy’s Yorkshire is indeed tame, but the film’s aware of that and it all serves as a haunting vision of what happens when dreams get smaller than the length of your street. In one gorgeous scene, Billy suffers a near breakdown in The Dance Hall, losing his mind amidst the trampling of a hundred local feet doing the congo, each one another bang on the pin that keeps him to the board.

Sir Tom Courtney’s Billy is a marvellous creation, possessing a slippery yet irresistible charm. The mischief in his eyes is infectious and he has the audience in the palm of his hand from the off, impressions and vocal character tics spilling out as thick and fast as each lie and fantasy that ping behind Billy’s eyes. In a beautiful moment, a rehearsed speech to an imaginary boss deforms into churchillian fervour and finally animalistic screeches as his imagination bends and twists from moment to moment. Crucially, it’s a performance that cracks but never softens as the film nears its resolution, and as the consequences of his deceptions start to pile up, he scampers backwards and forwards over the line between dreams and delusions, excuses and lies, boyhood japes and adult cruelty.

There will be those that cannot get past the This Is An Old Film feel, the deliberate pace and the working class anti-spectacle of the film’s setting and plot, but those that do will find Billy Liar to be a hilarious, charming and unsettling tale of wasted youth, one that feels as relevant and powerful as it did 50 long years ago. And as 25 year old manchild still clinging to his boyhood dreams, I speak with authority on this.

Praise be to the dark lord that it’s better than Halloween II.

So far Rob Zombie’s directorial career has played out in two deranged parts. Part 1 was the exploitation gore fest of House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. They were violent and silly. I liked them. Then came his remake of Halloween and then came Halloween II. And they are shitty, shitty movies. I wanted to like them but they are shitty. Does his new work bring about Part 3 of his output – that we may call the historical/experimental double.

With The Lords of Salem, Zombie has created something much more personal and interesting to him. The film takes place in Salem, Massachusetts the scene of the US’s infamous witch trials. After an introduction which sees a group of cackling witches dance around (perhaps into) the fire we move quickly forward to now-a-time where we meet Heidi (played by Zombie’s muse and wide Sherri Moon Zombie). She works as a late night radio DJ where she is given a new black metal/doom track by a group who simply call themselves The Lords. When played the track has a hypnotic effect over Heidi and dozens of Salem women. Heidi begins to experience visions and hot flushes the likes of which haven’t been seen since Requiem for a Dream. Meanwhile Heidi’s troubling nice landlady (Judy Geeson) and her two sisters: Meg Foster and Patricia Quinn start to take a great interest in her. Let’s not quibble here. They’re witches and they want to make her a really powerful witch. All the while the always watchable and huggable Mr. Henderson… I mean Bruce Davison is on the trail of these here crafty witches.

With his first two films Zombie was paying homage to the schlocky, grindhouse horror of the 70s and 80s. The Lords of Salem feels like an attempt to amp up the psychological terrors. Zombie is reported as saying he imagined the film as The Shining directed by Ken Russell. Perhaps a closer description would be Rosemary’s Baby directed by Dario Argento. The visuals flip flop between the dingy, claustrophobic apartment bound to opulent and colourful. As a visual artist Zombie improves with each feature despite the obvious financial restrains of Salem. However Zombie the script writer still falls into the occasional trap where the story seems to meander as though. Almost like certain scenes were written in a hurry merely so he could get to writing the next set piece he had in his head. Which is the films main fault. Although given an intriguing set up, an interesting modern day turn and a classic haunted apartment device it’s hard to care for any of the characters involved and therefore find little to fear, expect for Bruce Davison.

Sherri Moon Zombie, like her husband, seems to mature with each film. Her performance is as diverse as with yet seen her as she just about manages to carry the film. Bruce Davison is Bruce Davison, therefore always awesome. Performance wise, for better or worse, belongs to the trio of Judy Geeson, Dee Wallace and Patricia Quinn. Either acting deliciously wicked or being horrendously over-the-top you can take your pick. Geeson’s appearance in particular calls to mind some similarities between Heidi’s predicament and Geeson’s character in Fear in the Night. Along the way there also cameos from Meg Foster (Evil Lynn!), Udo Kier and Ken Foree (yeah he was in Dawn of the Dead but he’ll always be Keenan’s Dad to me).

Zombie is definitely up his game when it comes to making the films he wants to make. Sadly he seems to have fallen into the Tarantino trap of being so busy referencing other movies that he has forgotten to make his own. It wasn’t that obvious to me whilst viewing the film but on reflection there are a litany of obvious influences. In fact one of the great pleasures of watching The Lords of Salem may be the fact that it reminds you of so many great films that you might want to dig out of your collection – at least eight spring to mind for me.

If you have enjoyed Zombies previous output you’ll probably find a lot to enjoy – there’s still gore just more suitably shown. There’s even a stupid little monster creature in it. What may separate the fans from the casual viewer is the the final 15 minutes. Which without giving too much away does turn into Zombies “Ken Russell” style – with a bit of Andy Warhol thrown in for good measure.