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| John Cale (Channing Tatum) protects President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) in White House Down. |
Isn't one hostile takeover a year enough for the White House to handle? For director Roland Emmerich, perhaps not. Back in 1996, Emmerich sicked a 15 mile-wide mother ship on America's seat of power in blockbuster hit, Independence Day and in 2013, nearly similar to Antoine Fuqua's Olympus Has Fallen a few months ago, there's no reprieve for the structure in White House Down.
Channing Tatum plays John Cale, a Capitol Police officer, who at the start of White House Down interviews for a post in the Secret Service, protecting President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). Concurrently, several key structures around Washington including the White House are targeted by a pack of terrorists motivated by financial and personal agendas. As the White House is compromised, Cale finds himself in the crossfire and teams up with the president to reach a safe point outside.
White House Down might not be the smartest action film of the summer, but for all its ludicrous dialogue and unrealistic course of events, Roland Emmerich maintains a level of tolerable cornball summer entertainment. Like many of his previous films such as 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, Emmerich throws reality far out the window, stringing scene after scene of guns blazing in all directions or iconic structures collapsing.
Externally, all of the mayhem is all show to simply mask the minimal character development and bloated disaster plot. Emmerich is like a kid with his hand on the trigger, always wanting to blow anything and everything up even if the audience is required more than average level of disbelief. The fact that Tatum is interviewing for a Secret Service position one minute and the next protection the president moments later are testaments to how ridiculously copied and pasted this plot is.
Yet, it's not that hard to go along for the ride. White House Down is a fine vehicle for solidifying Channing Tatum into a summer blockbuster action star. Overstuffed with countless action sequences, Tatum doesn't have to worry about acting or winning over the audience, rather it's all about being the macho beast prepared to take down a few one-dimension baddies making shop in the Oval Office.
Jamie Foxx isn't necessarily one of the better presidents of film, but he's there to make Channing Tatum look good as if the two were in some buddy comedy rather than a mindless summer action flick. Tatum and Foxx work decently as the escaping duo, always crafting some sort of plan to get themselves out of many of the over-the-top predicaments.
White House Down will certainly have to face audiences and critics who have already seen a more serious iteration of a White House attack in Olympus Has Fallen and will be drawing comparisons between the two similar movies. White House Down contains more of a blockbuster resonance that will appeal to audiences who care little for realism or character development, rather become transfixed with some explosions that would make Michael Bay jealous.
After a good 20-30 minutes of a slow build and laying the groundwork for the action, the relentless last two-thirds of White House Down keep the adrenaline pumping strong even with awkward humor along the way to diffuse the ounce of genuine tension. Emmerich struggles with humor in his disaster films and there's no hiding the fact here. Except for the minor quip about the White House being blown up in Emmerich's own Independence Day, the other attempts at humorous exchanges fall flat.
White House Down is by far Roland Emmerich's best movie in nearly a decade, but that's really not an accolade to be proud of when his more recent works include the abysmal pair of 10,000 B.C. and 2012. White House Down has little substance to offer, but by some miracle manages squeak by as lowest common denominator popcorn entertainment.
GRADE: C+ (6/10)
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