The American entertainment industry has a perverse fascination with kicking the red, white and blue colored holy crap out of their executive branch.
Cinematic presidents are routinely called out from behind their desk in the oval office to shoot terrorists, disable rogue nuclear weapons and fly F15’s against an alien armada.
Why? Because America! That’s why!
Director Roland Emmerich has embraced this national-masochistic tendency in the way that only a German can, by becoming the only force to destroy Washington D.C. more times than the British; levelling the capitol in Independence Day and 2012, freezing it in The Day After Tomorrow and finally burning it to the ground in White House Down. Here, the master of the disaster film scales back his apocalyptic arsenal for a more serious examination of the contemporary political implications of a domestic terrorist attack on the American president. With Channing Tatum. And rocket launchers.
After failing an interview for the Secret Service, down and out cop John Cale (Tatum) and his daughter Emily (Joey King) become caught in a paramilitary insurgency in the White House designed to topple the good ol’ U.S of A.
Cale embarks on a two hour throat-stomp-a-thon in order to save President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) and his daughter from a murderous and non-sensical plan devised by James Woods (played exceptionally well by James Woods), whom audiences will remember as the bad guy from every film ever made. The narrative is simple, the explosions plentiful and all sense of reality totally absent.
White House Down’s ludicrous tone and over-the-top implausibility raises it almost to the level of satire; which would be a compliment if it wasn’t accidentally satirising the exact film it was trying to be. The film doesn’t take itself seriously which adds to its threadbare, popcorn charm; but rarely pauses from its fifty calibre, shoot-em-up, Blackhawk Downbinge to develop any sense of story. Stuff happens, then that stuff blows up. Like, twice.
Tatum and Foxx have some solid comedic chemistry which deliver most of the film’s several laugh out loud moments, but even their combined charisma isn’t enough to carry the film. Emmerich does his star-spangled best to pick up the slack with action set pieces that although refreshingly well shot and structured, fail to achieve anything beyond the pedestrian. The special effects here also fall short of the standard that audiences have come to expect from their high-octane blockbuster. If I can tell the difference between a real chopper and a CGI one, you better believe the six year old in the back of the cinema tweeting on his iPad can.
The screenplay by James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man) attempts to overtake The Return Of The King for the prestige of having the most endings in a single film, with each plot twist only serving to add minutes to an already inflated run time. Even the film’s Obama analogy of an African-American president advocating an unpopular diplomacy plan falls flat. Mostly because Foxx’s character laces up a pair of Air Jordan’s halfway through running for his life; proving that sometimes you just can’t shake stereotypes. Even when you’re the leader of the free world.
If you are looking for a cheerfully shameless action flick you could do worse than White House Down. It may be little more than a vehicle for Channing Tatum to prove that he can get through an entire movie with his shirt on, but it ends up giving more back than what it will ask of its audience.
2.5/5
