White House Down

Even though I know I shouldn’t, I am going to go ahead and give Hollywood the benefit of the doubt and say that it’s just a coincidence that we all of a sudden have two attack and destroy the White House movies while there is a black President in office. In the past it literally took the world freezing over (Day After Tomorrow), the Earth melting at its core (2012), or an alien invasion (Independence Day) for us to see the White House get taken out. And in case you didn’t pick up on it, all of these movies were directed by Roland Emmerich who just so happens to be German. I am sure that this is also purely coincidental. I’m just happy he hasn’t gone racial with it and had random scenes of the President smoking weed with strippers while eating fried chicken in his waterbed. But I can assure you that if we ever elect a Hispanic President that the plot will revolve around a global threat of destroying every ice cream truck man and maid service in America. “For the love of God, please don’t! I will give you the money you ask for!!”

The first White House under attack movie we had this year in Olympus Has Fallen was fun because it was R; so there was plenty of hard core violence and blood to keep us entertained. Emmerich’s version of White House Down is PG-13 and has plenty of explosions but only assumed violence; so they rely on pretty people and bad jokes to fill in for the lack of blood or gore. There is a slightly annoying kid who for some reason stays alive a lot longer than they normally would in real life ala Home Alone. And there is the obligatory comic relief in the form of the White House tour guide who takes his job a bit too seriously and should have the studio laugh tracks after each line he recites. However this movie isn’t all bad. They really do try and recreate Die Hard by setting up a hostage situation in a building with a ring leader who relies on mercenaries to handle his dirty work. Jason Clarke is essentially playing the role of Karl who has a forced vendetta against Channing Tatum(John McClain) once Tatum kills his best friend. The bad guys even have a metro sexual hacker who wears glasses and is way too pumped about computers. “The quarterback IS toast!” Tatum is running around in a wife beater for half of the movie and yes you guessed it; the only person he can rely on is  his black sidekick Jamie Foxx. Foxx of course is a bit cooler and slimmer than Sgt Powell was in Die Hard.

So the plot is dumb. Jamie Foxx plays the president and he is on a mission to pull all of our troops out of the Middle East in hopes to have a peace treaty signed. He is facing some heavy opposition in his own cabinet on this and one day someone who has a personal score to settle decides to set up an explosion in the Capitol building as a diversion so they can really take control of the White House and take the President hostage. Meanwhile, Channing Tatum is on security detail for the Speaker of the House but just so happens to be in the building with his daughter while he is on an interview with the Secret Service. Once all hell breaks loose, every Secret Service agent is taken out and he gets separated from his daughter; leaving him as the only person who can possibly save the President and somehow get his daughter back in the process.

To the movie’s credit, there are additional layers to the story; it’s just that Emmerich does an awful job of telling them. He treats them all as filler until he gets to his next gun battle or CGI explosion but I am actually ok with this because the action in the movie is done fairly well. It’s just that all of the characters are a bit over the top and everyone in the movie knows that it’s an Emmerich film and realizes that they don’t really need to bother with acting. So the movie comes off as pretty generic.

White House Down is the perfect example of a movie that you watch when you are too hung over to move off of your couch.  You won’t be able to change the channel while eating greasy pizza to soak up the alcohol because you will be glued to the screen but you also won’t remember a thing about what you just saw because this is as forgettable of a movie as it gets. Well, you’ll remember how much Maggie Gyllenhaal looks like the Joker but that’s about it. I rate this movie as kind of WEAK.