So here we are in 2013. Back in March the Washington D.C.
under siege action thriller Olympus Has Fallen was released, and a mere three months
later the virtually identically titled and plotted White House Down is hitting theaters. How does this fare against
the competition?
Cale (Channing Tatum), a private security officer for the
Speaker of the House (Richard Jenkins), takes his daughter on a tour of the
White House just as terrorists decide to take over. When she is captured by
their leader Stenz (Jason Clarke) and traitorous Secret Service officer Walker
(James Woods), Cale teams up with the President (Jamie Foxx) to stop them from
carrying out their plan and save his child.
First off, this film is cheesy as all hell. It’s corny,
idiotic and sometimes downright stupid. But that’s all part of the fun of it.
It doesn’t take itself too seriously like Olympus Has Fallen, and therefore it was more enjoyable in my eyes. White House Down is not a great movie by
any means. Shit, it’s not even good. When it comes to pure summer popcorn
escapist fare this is exactly what I expect to see when I plop down my $12 for
a ticket. I just want to be entertained and this flick did just that.
The cast is top notch. Some can claim that Olympus Has Fallen did as well, but here
the actors seem to know that the movie they are performing in is ridiculous and
just go with it. Channing Tatum is awesome as the hero, sort of a mash-up of
John McClane and Jason Statham. He actually manages to give his character a
personality (unlike in G.I. Joe: The Rise
of Cobra) and I enjoyed watching him taking out wave upon wave of bad guys.
He won’t win a Golden Globe for his skills, but he’s definitely not as bad as
he usually is here. The fact that he does the majority of his own stunts is
impressive as well. Jamie Foxx is likeable and fun as well as President Sawyer,
a combination of Barack Obama’s cool and hip exterior with a little bit of
Django thrown in there for attitude. He shares a great chemistry with Tatum and
when the two of them are on-screen together the movie really hits its high
points.
The casting of James Woods in a movie like this was a bit of
a surprise since I haven’t seen him in anything in years (not since his TV show
Shark went off the air in 2008) and
action movies aren’t exactly what he’s known for. Regardless, he hams it up
incredibly well as the main villain and, like General Zod in Man of Steel, has a method behind his
madness that puts his motives in a gray area that is somewhat sympathetic (the
scene when his wife learns of his plot is probably one of the best moments in
any Roland Emmerich film). Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty, Death Race) as his
right hand man is a nice contrast against Tatum. He goes a little overboard
with the screaming now and then but for the most part he plays a decent
physical adversary.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is decent, but really has nothing to do
but look concerned and worried. She can’t seem to keep the smirk off her face
during the hokier moments (“The President wants to do ‘the thing’”) and for
some reason I got the feeling that she was just cashing a check. She has some
good moments though (the Capitol building explosion). Richard Jenkins, Jimmi
Simpson, Lance Reddick, Matt Craven, Nicolas Wight and Joey King all perform
above what a movie like this would normally call for. However, Rachelle Lefevre
as Cole’s ex-wife is downright awful. He daughter is all over the news as a
hostage and not once does she look like she gives a shit.
The script by James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man, Zodiac,
The Rundown, The Losers) is beyond ludicrous at times (the car chase across the
White House front lawn is one of the goofiest things I’ve seen all summer) and filled to the brim with every cliché in the book, but
I’m of a mind to say that he was told to just spin a tale that is fast and fun
with reality checking in only occasionally. He does tend to go over the top
with the sentimental stuff (anything involving Cole’s daughter), it’s slow
going from the start because the main plot doesn’t kick in until 45 minutes
into the movie, events are tied up to neatly, some of the humor is lame (“How
are you still awake?” – “Caffeine and patriotism.”) and some of the tactics on
display are incredibly suspect (everyone seems to love the White House’s
basement). Some of the characters are well drawn, the action scenes are
plentiful and the a lot of the happenings are fun as well as somewhat
disturbing (seeing the Capitol building collapse reminded me of 9/11 imagery). Another
aspect I thought was interesting and ballsy was that the majority of the
villains were white supremacists and want the President dead because he’s
African American. Funnily enough Vanderbilt’s script covers a lot of the same
ground as Olympus Has Fallen.
However, this was in production long before that film was even in the scripting
stage. The end product showed its rushed origins and it suffered immensely due
to it. Thankfully that’s not the case here.
Director Roland Emmerich is extremely hit or miss with me.
His older movies like Stargate and The Patriot I still find entertaining,
but some like Independence Day have
definitely soured over the years. His more recent films (2012, 10,000 BC, The Day After Tomorrow) I cannot stand
for the most part due to how badly written they were. The fact that he didn’t go
crazy with the overall scope of the story makes this one of his most restrained
offerings in decades. You can tell that he wanted to go small and stay small
instead of destroying as much property as he possibly could as usual. Sure some
D.C. landmarks get effed in the A, but that’s to be expected. Emmerich has
always excelled in his direction of action and here is no different. We get
plenty of cool shootouts, fist fights and aerial shenanigans. Everything makes
sense due to some good editing and choreography, and thankfully the entire film
takes place during the daytime unlike Olympus Has Fallen (scenes were so dark I couldn’t see anything). He
manages to wring a decent performance out of Tatum, as I mentioned earlier as
well. His problem, as it usually is, that he loves to fill his movies with
pointless events (the “Thing”), redundant scenes and lots of dumb humor (“Get
your hands off my Jordans!”). His editor sure can put together a nifty car
chase, but trimming the fat from the rest of the movie must be a no-no. This
could have easily clocked in at under two hours, but it is needlessly stretched
out to nearly two and a half. Sometimes brevity can be your friend, which is a
lesson Mr. Emmerich has yet to learn.
When the credits rolled I realized that I had watched what
amounted to 75% of repeated material from Olympus Has Fallen. But I was okay with it. Why? Because this is what I was
expecting to see back in March – an entertaining movie. While this is
definitely not a flick I would call “good”, it’s exactly what it set out to be
and doesn’t pretend to be anything but. White
House Down is too long, dumb and hokey, but it’s also one of the more
enjoyable movies I’ve seen this summer. And its 150% better than its
doppelganger.
Let’s just see how well it holds up fifteen years down the
line. Time was not kind to ID4.
3.5 out of 5
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