White House Down, 2013.
Directed by Roland Emmerich.
Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, Joey King, and James Woods.
SYNOPSIS:
While on a tour of the White House with his young daughter, a Capitol policeman springs into action to save his child and protect the president from a heavily armed group of paramilitary invaders.
White House Down stars Channing Tatum as John Cale, a Capitol Policeman who has just been denied the job of Secret Service agent for President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). Cale takes his daughter Emily (Joey King) on a tour of the White House because she is a huge fan of politics. While on the tour the building is taken over by a paramilitary group out to capture the President as well as completely take over the White House. With him being the only person capable of taking down this group, Cale has to do whatever he can to save his daughter, the President and the White House.
This film is directed by Roland Emmerich who is best known for blowing up the White House in films like Independence Day and 2012. Once again he’s attacking the White House, as the title states, and surprisingly it’s actually somewhat entertaining. White House Down is one of two films that came out in 2013 about the White House being overtaken, the other being Olympus Has Fallen, and this ended up being the better of the two. Roland Emmerich takes a different approach than Antoine Fuqua; where Olympus Has Fallen felt like it was trying to be a little too serious White House Down knows it’s a big, dumb action movie and doesn’t try to be anything else.
Right from the get go you can easily tell how the entire film is going to play out but there’s plenty going on and it’s entertaining enough to keep you interested. Most of the action sequences are pretty good and the specials effects are solid except for a few scenes here and there. Nobody in the cast gives a particularly good performance but everyone does a decent enough job to keep things moving. Joey King was a nice surprise however because she is really good here considering she’s fairly young – she’s actually better than a lot of the veteran actors. Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx are kind of going through the motions but their chemistry together works very well which is a highlight of the film. Everyone else from Maggie Gyllenhaal to Jason Clarke and James Woods are all fine in their roles, but most aren’t given much to do.
Even though White House Down is entertaining in some ways, it certainly has a few negatives. It’s a little too long and 15-20 minutes could have been cut because after a while it just feels like the same things keep happening. To go along with some bad CG, from time to time there are shots where you can clearly tell it’s green screen. It also takes a good while for the siege to begin at the White House. It’s understandable to develop some of the characters beforehand but it just felt like was taking too long to get to the action.
In the end, White House Down has some fun action scenes and great chemistry between Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx. It’s a little overlong and feels like it panders around from time to time, but nevertheless the film is entertaining enough to recommend.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Jake Peffer
Originally published January 20, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
