"White House Down" - directed by Roland Emmerich
I feel dirty.
In a cinematic sense that is.
It's an amalgam of feelings making up the dirtiness.
Partly the yuk feeling when I watched Joe Pesci making out with a still very sexy Sharon Stone in Scorsese's excellent "Casino".
A bit of the brilliant cringe-y awkwardness I felt when watching most of the original British version of "The Office".
Also quite a lot of the feeling I got when the 'secret' of M Night Shyamalan's risible "The Happening" was revealed.
Actually, the way I felt for that whole movie.
And the reason I feel this cinematic dirtiness hodgepodge is that I have just come out of a screening of "White House Down".
It's not that I hated the movie.
I wasn't bored by it- not slightly.
There is nothing offensively violent- not that I am ever offended by cinema violence.
There were no events or scenes endorsing something that I am passionately opposed to.
The reason that I feel cinematically dirty is because I enjoyed the film but I know that I really shouldn't have.
It was like going on a date with Paris Hilton and then coming home and trying to figure out how the hell it came to be that you enjoyed her company.
It's an apt comparison because "White House Down" is one of the out and out dumbest movies that I have ever seen.
It looks expensive (and was) but presumably all of the money went on casting, explosions and effects because it sure as hell didn't go towards getting a decent script.
And God help me I enjoyed it.
If there is an opposite of movie snob I am it.
I love horror movies which means I have been witness to the entire range of movie quality- good, great, mediocre and awful.
I have a copy of "The Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf" and am very proud of my brain movie collection ("The Brain That Wouldn't Die", "The Brain From Planet Arous" etc)
I make no apologies for my love of "Tango and Cash", "A Woman Scorned" and "Picasso Trigger" - in their own way they are every bit as entertaining as "The Terminator", "Fatal Attraction" and "Thunderball".
My feeling is that it doesn't matter what a movie does or does not do - if it entertains me it is a success.
But still- I am baffled as to why I enjoyed two hours watching Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx participate in a tale so riddled with plot holes, leaps of logic, shallow characterisation and laughably inane dialogue.
Let's try some questions....
* Who do you think would win in a fist fight between a 45 year old, very fit Jamie Foxx and 65 year old James Woods?
* How many rounds of 30mm mini-gun fire and RPG rockets do you think a Presidential Limousine could withstand before it was undriveable?
* And how secure do you think nuclear launch codes are?
The answers are...
The old guy, about ten thousand or so and not very.
Most action movies are at least a little far fetched- maybe even all action movies.
I certainly expect to marvel at how much punishment a hero can take or how easily a villain can infiltrate the most secure places on the planet but there is a limit.
"Olympus Has Fallen" came out earlier this year and it is pretty much exactly the same story as "White House Down".
Terrorists take over the White House and take the US President hostage.
In the case of the former it was within the bounds of action movie logic and nothing too logic defying took place.
It was tense, violent and even found time for a few lines of zinger dialogue.
"White House Down" on the other hand is cheesy, strictly PG-13 and has some of the corniest dialogue of recent times.
Quality aside these films are otherwise pretty much the same.
Gerard Butler was an unfairly sidelined Secret Service Agent in "Olympus Has Fallen" - Channing Tatum in "White House Down" desperately wants to be one.
Butler removes the token kid from proceedings very early - Tatum spends the entire movie trying to.
"Olympus Has Fallen" takes great pains to explain why obvious things like rescue attempts are not possible but "White House Down" isn't concerned with such things.
When Tatum and Foxx escape the building in a limo they spend several minutes circling the lawn fountain pursued by heavily armed vehicles in full view of hundreds of armed soldiers and the world's media but no one thinks to help them out.
Eventually a tank is utilised unsuccessfully but apparently one man with an RPG can deal to that.
There are so many head-scratchingly dumb events such as this that I became fascinated by this film.
I haven't seen script writing idiocy on a scale such as this since "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen".
It is glorious.
So why did I have fun with this movie?
Best as I can figure it comes down to two things.
Its only saving graces are Channing Tatum and the the sheer amount of spectacle on display.
Roland Emmerich is famous for this sort of thing.
Hell- he even finds time to reference his own "Independence Day" in this movie.
All of his tropes are present and correct here.
Obviously famous landmarks get destroyed- that's a no-brainer.
We have the child with a strained relationship with a parent.
This child will have a talent revealed early on that will emerge later in the finale.
There are military types who are largely useless until one rogue man tells them how to win the day.
Goofy scientist / conspiracy nut / hacker - check.
Slow motion shots of aircraft crashing and exploding - well catered for.
You get away with this sort of stuff in silly popcorn flicks like "Independence Day", "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012" because they're pure fantasy.
A movie about a terrorist attack however is plucked right from world headlines.
It's harder to make light of these days.
"Olympus Has Fallen" treats it seriously (as much as an action thriller can) and shows us the violent consequences of such things.
It used Die Hard as a template as many, many action flicks have done in the wake of the 1987 classic.
"White House Down" loses its nerve and opts to aim for the pursuit of the wider audience that the insipid PG-13 rating allegedly allows.
In doing so it saps all tension and weight from proceedings.
What little is left is dealt to by the pre-release trailers and posters that give away far too much of what is going to happen.
It too is ripping off Die Hard - there are MP7's instead of MP5's and a kid is the pawn in the game instead of a wife but we still have crashing helicopters, lift-shaft antics, a wife-beater clad everyman hero and a host of other elements um... inspired by the great John McTiernan film.
"Die Hard" had well written characters whereas "White House Down" has characters as thin as tissue paper with Jamie Foxx's President Sawyer coming off worst.
Inexplicably lead right into the middle of a tour group by his bodyguards he chooses to stop and pose for a video clip with a young girl.
In the midst of a crisis that could see the world plunged into a nuclear war he chooses not to remove himself from a situation in which the baddies need his hand prints and voice to activate the nukes but instead surrenders himself to them to save one girl.
The same girl he will later give up because the life of one cannot be saved at the expense of millions!
The lapses in narrative sense are truly amazing.
Thank God then for Channing Tatum.
Ever since his fine comedic work in "21 Jump Street" I have been turned around on this guy.
He has rapidly become the go to guy for playing the sort of likeable rogue roles that used to be played by the likes of Bruce Willis, Kurt Russell and Harrison Ford.
Clearly he has comedic chops and as any woman north of twelve years old will attest- the physical attributes for action movies.
He is a good choice for this kind of role- he just deserves better to work with.
To be fair the casting is generally good with substantial roles for James Woods, Richard Jenkins, Jason Clarke and Michael Murphy.
Poor old Rachelle Lefevre is starting to look like a one trick pony after her great work in "Barney's Version".
She has had some TV, the Twilight movies and this otherwise.
She is perfectly fine as Tatum's estranged wife but it's a bit of a nothing role.
Maggie Gyllenhaal on the other hand turns in one of the worst performances that I have seen from her- all overblown sincerity and grand gestures.
She is awful in this movie.
Jake Weber and Matt Craven are underused and I have no idea what Jimmi Simpson's character is supposed to be.
Apparentlty a cross between a hacker and a fashion designer.
Bizarre.
Young Joey King ("The Dark Knight Rises" and "Crazy Stupid Love") is very good as Emily- the damsel in distress of the piece.
She gets the absolute corniest moment of the movie (and that is quite a claim) but does fine, fine work on the whole.
Watching this movie is not unlike spending a couple of hours on one of those Motion Master rides.
It is probably less dramatically sound than the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios but no less fun.
Truly this is a guilty pleasure.
I guarantee that you will gawp at the screen in disbelief at the many illogical WTF moments that abound during its two hour running time.
It is incredible how ineffective 30mm mini-gun rounds are on both metal and man- who knew?
Incredibly slack security seems to be commonplace too according to this film.
The President is allowed to change secure flight plans on a whim for instance.
You will groan repeatedly at the ridiculously corny dialogue with gems scattered generously throughout.
But I bet you will have a lot of fun too- maybe in spite of yourself.
It is indeed big, loud, poorly written dumb fun relying on the appeal of its lead and some decent effects but fun is fun.
In a cinematic sense that is.
It's an amalgam of feelings making up the dirtiness.
Partly the yuk feeling when I watched Joe Pesci making out with a still very sexy Sharon Stone in Scorsese's excellent "Casino".
A bit of the brilliant cringe-y awkwardness I felt when watching most of the original British version of "The Office".
Also quite a lot of the feeling I got when the 'secret' of M Night Shyamalan's risible "The Happening" was revealed.
Actually, the way I felt for that whole movie.
And the reason I feel this cinematic dirtiness hodgepodge is that I have just come out of a screening of "White House Down".
It's not that I hated the movie.
I wasn't bored by it- not slightly.
There is nothing offensively violent- not that I am ever offended by cinema violence.
There were no events or scenes endorsing something that I am passionately opposed to.
The reason that I feel cinematically dirty is because I enjoyed the film but I know that I really shouldn't have.
It was like going on a date with Paris Hilton and then coming home and trying to figure out how the hell it came to be that you enjoyed her company.
It's an apt comparison because "White House Down" is one of the out and out dumbest movies that I have ever seen.
It looks expensive (and was) but presumably all of the money went on casting, explosions and effects because it sure as hell didn't go towards getting a decent script.
And God help me I enjoyed it.
 |
| This is a Roland Emmerich film..... can you tell? |
I love horror movies which means I have been witness to the entire range of movie quality- good, great, mediocre and awful.
I have a copy of "The Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf" and am very proud of my brain movie collection ("The Brain That Wouldn't Die", "The Brain From Planet Arous" etc)
I make no apologies for my love of "Tango and Cash", "A Woman Scorned" and "Picasso Trigger" - in their own way they are every bit as entertaining as "The Terminator", "Fatal Attraction" and "Thunderball".
My feeling is that it doesn't matter what a movie does or does not do - if it entertains me it is a success.
But still- I am baffled as to why I enjoyed two hours watching Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx participate in a tale so riddled with plot holes, leaps of logic, shallow characterisation and laughably inane dialogue.
Let's try some questions....
* Who do you think would win in a fist fight between a 45 year old, very fit Jamie Foxx and 65 year old James Woods?
* How many rounds of 30mm mini-gun fire and RPG rockets do you think a Presidential Limousine could withstand before it was undriveable?
* And how secure do you think nuclear launch codes are?
The answers are...
The old guy, about ten thousand or so and not very.
Most action movies are at least a little far fetched- maybe even all action movies.
 |
| A lift Shaft scene - that's never been done before. No, wait |
"Olympus Has Fallen" came out earlier this year and it is pretty much exactly the same story as "White House Down".
Terrorists take over the White House and take the US President hostage.
In the case of the former it was within the bounds of action movie logic and nothing too logic defying took place.
It was tense, violent and even found time for a few lines of zinger dialogue.
"White House Down" on the other hand is cheesy, strictly PG-13 and has some of the corniest dialogue of recent times.
Quality aside these films are otherwise pretty much the same.
Gerard Butler was an unfairly sidelined Secret Service Agent in "Olympus Has Fallen" - Channing Tatum in "White House Down" desperately wants to be one.
Butler removes the token kid from proceedings very early - Tatum spends the entire movie trying to.
"Olympus Has Fallen" takes great pains to explain why obvious things like rescue attempts are not possible but "White House Down" isn't concerned with such things.
When Tatum and Foxx escape the building in a limo they spend several minutes circling the lawn fountain pursued by heavily armed vehicles in full view of hundreds of armed soldiers and the world's media but no one thinks to help them out.
Eventually a tank is utilised unsuccessfully but apparently one man with an RPG can deal to that.
There are so many head-scratchingly dumb events such as this that I became fascinated by this film.
I haven't seen script writing idiocy on a scale such as this since "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen".
It is glorious.
 |
| Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx |
Best as I can figure it comes down to two things.
Its only saving graces are Channing Tatum and the the sheer amount of spectacle on display.
Roland Emmerich is famous for this sort of thing.
Hell- he even finds time to reference his own "Independence Day" in this movie.
All of his tropes are present and correct here.
Obviously famous landmarks get destroyed- that's a no-brainer.
We have the child with a strained relationship with a parent.
This child will have a talent revealed early on that will emerge later in the finale.
There are military types who are largely useless until one rogue man tells them how to win the day.
Goofy scientist / conspiracy nut / hacker - check.
Slow motion shots of aircraft crashing and exploding - well catered for.
You get away with this sort of stuff in silly popcorn flicks like "Independence Day", "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012" because they're pure fantasy.
A movie about a terrorist attack however is plucked right from world headlines.
It's harder to make light of these days.
"Olympus Has Fallen" treats it seriously (as much as an action thriller can) and shows us the violent consequences of such things.
It used Die Hard as a template as many, many action flicks have done in the wake of the 1987 classic.
"White House Down" loses its nerve and opts to aim for the pursuit of the wider audience that the insipid PG-13 rating allegedly allows.
In doing so it saps all tension and weight from proceedings.
What little is left is dealt to by the pre-release trailers and posters that give away far too much of what is going to happen.
It too is ripping off Die Hard - there are MP7's instead of MP5's and a kid is the pawn in the game instead of a wife but we still have crashing helicopters, lift-shaft antics, a wife-beater clad everyman hero and a host of other elements um... inspired by the great John McTiernan film.
"Die Hard" had well written characters whereas "White House Down" has characters as thin as tissue paper with Jamie Foxx's President Sawyer coming off worst.
Inexplicably lead right into the middle of a tour group by his bodyguards he chooses to stop and pose for a video clip with a young girl.
 |
| Donnie the Tour Guide- actually quite funny |
The same girl he will later give up because the life of one cannot be saved at the expense of millions!
The lapses in narrative sense are truly amazing.
Thank God then for Channing Tatum.
Ever since his fine comedic work in "21 Jump Street" I have been turned around on this guy.
He has rapidly become the go to guy for playing the sort of likeable rogue roles that used to be played by the likes of Bruce Willis, Kurt Russell and Harrison Ford.
Clearly he has comedic chops and as any woman north of twelve years old will attest- the physical attributes for action movies.
He is a good choice for this kind of role- he just deserves better to work with.
To be fair the casting is generally good with substantial roles for James Woods, Richard Jenkins, Jason Clarke and Michael Murphy.
Poor old Rachelle Lefevre is starting to look like a one trick pony after her great work in "Barney's Version".
She has had some TV, the Twilight movies and this otherwise.
She is perfectly fine as Tatum's estranged wife but it's a bit of a nothing role.
Maggie Gyllenhaal on the other hand turns in one of the worst performances that I have seen from her- all overblown sincerity and grand gestures.
She is awful in this movie.
Jake Weber and Matt Craven are underused and I have no idea what Jimmi Simpson's character is supposed to be.
Apparentlty a cross between a hacker and a fashion designer.
Bizarre.
Young Joey King ("The Dark Knight Rises" and "Crazy Stupid Love") is very good as Emily- the damsel in distress of the piece.
She gets the absolute corniest moment of the movie (and that is quite a claim) but does fine, fine work on the whole.
 |
| James Woods vs Maggie Gyllenhaal - a photo finish in the Overacting Cup |
It is probably less dramatically sound than the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios but no less fun.
Truly this is a guilty pleasure.
I guarantee that you will gawp at the screen in disbelief at the many illogical WTF moments that abound during its two hour running time.
It is incredible how ineffective 30mm mini-gun rounds are on both metal and man- who knew?
Incredibly slack security seems to be commonplace too according to this film.
The President is allowed to change secure flight plans on a whim for instance.
You will groan repeatedly at the ridiculously corny dialogue with gems scattered generously throughout.
But I bet you will have a lot of fun too- maybe in spite of yourself.
It is indeed big, loud, poorly written dumb fun relying on the appeal of its lead and some decent effects but fun is fun.
| Rated | M for mild violence and profanity (only one 'F') |
| Running Time: | 131 minutes (2hrs, 5 mins without end credits |
| Starring: |
| Channing Tatum | --- Cale |
| Jamie Foxx | --- President Sawyer |
| James Woods | --- Walker |
| Jason Clarke | --- Stenz |
| Maggie Gyllenhaal | --- Finnerty |
| Joey King | --- Emily Cale |
| Richard Jenkins | --- Raphelson |
| Nicolas Wright | --- Donnie |
| Jimmi Simpson | --- Tyler |
| Michael Murphy | --- Vice President Hammond |
| Lance Reddick | --- General Caulfield |
| Matt Craven | --- Agent Kellerman |
| Jake Weber | --- Agent Hope |
| Jackie Geary | --- Jenna |
| Rachelle Lefevre | --- Melanie |
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