Movie Review Rewind: White House Down (2013)

On the latest edition of Movie Review Rewind, Brandon Vick flips the calendar back to 2013 for a look at White House Down.

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Apparently watching the White House go up in flames is very popular this year. This past March, the Antoine Fuqua directed Olympus Has Fallen came out and with plenty of similarities, the comparisons are inevitable. But it can all be summed up by saying this: White House Down is the dumb, cheaper, PG-13 version. The entire feel of the movie is a mixture of being corny, brainless, and overly predictable. Thank goodness for some humor, rip-roaring action, and decent chemistry between Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum. Those are just the few reasons White House Down is bearable to watch.

John Cale (Tatum) works as a U.S. Capitol police officer, but his dream job is to work for the Secret Service. It is all about who you know and after a few favors, he gets his chance to live that dream when he gets an interview with Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the head of the White House detail. And wouldn’t you know they are old college buddies. However, his interview still does not go well, but Cale still plans on taking his daughter (Joey King) on the White House tour. It’s a desperate attempt for him to be more of a presence in his daughter’s life and she just so happens to be a huge fan of politics.

The bad news is their tour will be the worst experience of their lives. A group of mercenaries break in to the most famous house in the country and seize control within just a few minutes. It was so easy that they must have had some help from someone on the inside. Yep. It is the Chief of Security (James Woods). Go figure. And if you think I just ruined a key moment of the movie, don’t worry I did no such thing. You will see it coming from a mile away. Maybe two miles away.

Now with the White House takeover almost complete, we need a hero to stop the bad guys from destroying the world and Cale is perfect for the job. I bet if he can save his daughter, she will forgive him for the past and love him more than she ever has before. And if at all possible, if he could somehow protect President Sawyer (Foxx) and get him to safety, he might finally get the job he was born to do. All of this should sound pretty familiar by this point.

There is not much to talk about when it comes to performances. Tatum attempts to be a young Bruce Willis while wearing a white tank top and shooting bullets everywhere. Foxx does his best impression of President Obama yet never comes across as presidential. He is a tremendous talent, but he rarely shows it these days. At least we still remember Django Unchained. There is a great supporting cast, but you can’t brag about it when none of them are put to good use. Woods and Gyllenhaal are the only two who seem to be trying to give White House Down some kind of emotion and actual conviction.

The Master of Destruction, director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012), is brilliant at blowing shit up. Every time we see an Emmerich movie, we know it’s going to be a huge, messy spectacle with a serving of complete and utter mayhem. We marvel over the action sequences and choose to ignore the lack of any real substance concerning the story. A lot like Emmerich’s other movies, White House Down is full of noise and chaos, but offers nothing else. At least he is intelligent enough to put quite a bit of humor in the movie. It brings awareness that even the people making this aren’t taking it too seriously.

There is a way to a do a big, preposterous, action-packed movie without it being unsatisfying and simply disastrous. Do not get me wrong. Emmerich knows exactly how to do it. He has done it multiple times before. It’s just when he blew up the house on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Independence Day, it was fun to watch. This time around—not so much.

Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association, the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and the star of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.

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