Movie Review: White House Down

Movie Review: "White House Down"/Rated PG-13/Columbia/132 min./Dir. by Roland Emmerich

Director Roland Emmerich has made a career destroying landmarks, some of them repeatedly.  He has destroyed the Statue of Liberty twice, the U.S. Bank building twice, and twice blown up the Vatican.  In fact, if you take into consideration "2012", he has technically destroyed every single historical landmark in the world at least once.  However, there is one building that he takes a particular zealous glee in destroying over and over and over again.  The White House.

It's been wiped out by cataclysmic tsunami......

It's been blown up by aliens.....

All of those were part of global catastrophes though.  Now he's put the White House front and center in his cross-hairs of destruction with "White House Down", a big-budget, highly-predictable political thriller that, in spite of its flaws, is one of his most enjoyable films.

Channing Tatum plays John Cale, a character with qualities that could have been lifted from a action movie hero text book:  A former soldier who has been doing his best to balance a job guarding the House Majority Leader (Richard Jenkins) with getting closer with his estranged and angry teenage daughter (Joey King).  Through a series of somewhat contrived circumstances, he and his daughter happen to be visiting the White House on the exact day when militants blow up the senate and infiltrate the White House itself.  If you've seen the commercials, you know that Cale's daughter ends up a hostage and Cale ends up becoming the President's last remaining protector inside the residence.  

As I mentioned before, there are twists and turns in the plot, but none that you won't have figured out in the first 15 minutes.   Of course, you don't see an Emmerich movie for the complexity of the plot (although this one tries harder than his average fare).  No, you see an Emmerich movie for the pacing, the explosions, and the occasionally inappropriately broad bit of comedy (here in the form of a White House tour guide that is very protective of the antiques to be found there).

One of the things that sets Emmerich's films apart from those of fellow master of pyrotechnics, Michael Bay, is that Emmerich's films have a sincerity that makes you care about the characters even when they behave in unbelievable and illogical ways.  The performances throughout are uniformly enjoyable, especially Tatum and Jamie Foxx, who plays the President.  Tatum seems to recognize that he is in "Die Hard in the White House" and he does a terrific job keeping the proceedings light when they need to be, but equally able to kick anarchist butt with a fierce physicality.  For reasons based more in policy than race, it is clear that Jamie Foxx is playing a hyper-realized version of President Obama, but he makes the roll his own with humor and grace.

"White House Down" has dreams of being "Air Force One", but it's way to silly for that.  It does, however, make a welcome departure from Emmerich's disaster-of-the-millennium wheelhouse.  By keeping the action focused on a single location and by switching genres to political thriller, he seems more energized than he has on any film since "Independence Day".  It's a "turn off your brain and have fun" kind of movie with lots of fun performances, high-speed action, and suspenseful set pieces.

FINAL NOTE/WARNING:  I'd like to talk a little about the politics of the film and I can't do so without some MINOR SPOILERS.  This is NOT a bi-partisan movie.  In Emmerich's Washington D.C., all people who align politically on the left are thoughtful, altruistic, and disappointed that they have to play the political game in order to change the world for the better.  Conversely, all on the right are violent, selfish, greedy, and in bed with big business, especially weapons manufacturers (with the exception of a Glenn Beck-type talk show host who gets the opportunity to show some courageous backbone).  If you agree with this political stance, you'll root on the heroes with an increased fervor.  If you disagree, this movie will be nothing short of infuriating.  If you, like me, believe that good people and selfish people can be found throughout the political spectrum and that the political system is too corrupt for either party to lay sole claim to the angel or demon archetype, then you will recognize the propaganda, chuckle it away and enjoy the fireworks.  Again, I'm not making a political statement, but when deciding if you want to see the movie, I think you should have all the info.

Grade (as a film, not a political statement): B-