WHITE HOUSE DOWN

Washington, D.C. police officer John Cale takes his daughter to the White House for two reasons. The first reason is for a job interview at the Secret Service and the second is to accompany his daughter on the White House tour. This is also the day a group of heavily armed mercenaries decide to take the American President (John Sawyer) hostage. Since the president’s own security unit is incapacitated at the very beginning of the attack, it is up to Cale to protect the president and defeat the terrorists.

White House Down (WHD) is the second movie released this year about an assault on the White House, the former being Olympus Has Fallen (OHF). This is yet another instance where two movies which essentially have identical story lines are released in the same year. I refer to this occurrence as “The Curse of the Look-alike Movies.” During 1997 the movie Dante’s Peak erupted before Volcano, in 1998 Deep Impact was followed by Armageddon and in 2006 Capote preceded Infamous. It’s a curse because comparisons will be easily made between the two and one film always gets trounced on. In the case of 2013’s match up the unanimous loser is WHD. James Vanderbilt’s screenplay is a pathetic excuse of a script and boggles the mind that it was sold in the first place. It’s basically Die Hard at the White House, where John McClane is replaced by John Cale. The Cale character, comparable to many movie-dads is divorced, dislikes the ex-wife and alienated from his child. Screenwriters who still use clichés such as ‘the clueless father who doesn’t know how to raise a child’ and the ‘kid who calls their father by his first name;’ should be burned at the stake. WHD’s lethargic start is unacceptable especially from an action flick. The villains take more than thirty minutes to make their presence known and then commandeer the White House like it was a kid’s tree house. After that Vanderbilt wraps up the story by including a double-cross, some mass panic, an overdose of Yankee patriotism and a predictable twist at the end.

The cast is a combination plate of young and old players. Channing Tatum, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jaime Foxx represent Team Young, while James Woods, Richard Jenkins and Lance Reddick comprise Team Old. The performances are tolerable because nearly all the actors are capable except for Channing Tatum who plays John Cale. Regardless of his physical appeal, Tatum is an actor who has yet to display his range. He quintessentially seems to be playing himself in nearly every role he does. His role in 21 Jump Street (2012) is a rare exception and proves he may be better suited for comedy. But Tatum’s popularity and Foxx’s star power is not enough to make WHD a box office hit.

For a high budget Hollywood action film, WHD looks like it was made by a high school film club. The action is utterly boring. The gun fights, the hand-to-hand combats, and the stunts are all unexciting. The shots are stale, the score is mute and the CGI is hilariously shameful. And the man who should acknowledge all the embarrassment is director Roland Emmerich. There was a time when an Emmerich Movie was a guilty pleasure for me. Films like Independence Day (1996) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) were thoroughly entertaining. But with movies like 10,000 BC (2008), 2012 (2009) and now WHD, Emmerich is on my list of Flop-Makers. Standards of present day Action Blockbusters are raised each year but this film is a sad throw back to B-movie filmmaking.

Rating: 3/10

S. V. Fernando