Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, Joey King, James Woods.
Running Time: 131 minutes
Certificate: 12
Extras: Dynamic Duo: Channing Tatum & Jamie Foxx, Men Of Action, Meet The Insiders, Roland Emmerich: Supporting Cast, Gag Reel, Inside Story, The Beast, The Full Arsenal, Presidential Treatment, Crashing The Oval Office, Drowning The Beast, Recreating The White House, VFX Boundaries Down, Lights – Camera – Heart-Pumping Action.
It’s easy to forget that predictability is all about context. While the likes of AVATAR looks great, it encourages that disbelieving eye-roll as it fights to be cleverer than it is but when it’s WHITE HOUSE DOWN, you’ve got the best old-school entertainment and is probably, wait, definitely what A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD desperately wanted to be.
For every clichéd character, including a tech-geek with a penchant for classical music, Roland Emmerich has created an explosive, quick-quipped, popcorn-munching tour de force with all the ridiculousness you’d want from the very best of action-based escapism movies.
Of course, as this is Emmerich, let’s not forget the less-than-obvious political statement that may or may not go over the head of some. Alongside gigantic set pieces, there is a drip-fed subtext with President Jamie Foxx (or maybe President Sawyer) leading the charge towards some form of world peace and they eventually achieve this by blowing the White House to smithereens. Our John McClane is John Cale (they might as well called him John McCale) expertly portrayed by Channing Tatum, who’s the man striving to make his life better and prove to his daughter Emily (Joey King) that he’s trying to do something positive by going for a job as a Secret Service agent at the White House.
But, wait, there’s a twist! Cale doesn’t get the job as he’s not qualified enough but on the day that he’s there, a crafty and heavily armed group of paramilitary terrorists decide that they want the President for a dastardly reason and so – breathes – the White House goes on lock down but is there one man around today who’ll fight his way back to save his daughter and the country? Well, you’ll have to watch to find out.
Emmerich pulls out all the tricks for WHITE HOUSE DOWN that includes a sociopath/psychopath with a moustache, tech guy Tyler (Jimmi Simpson) looking suspiciously like Stephen Baldwin in THE USUAL SUSPECTS, bullet-proof limos driving around the White House lawn and even a couple of mentions for his own INDEPENDENCE DAY…including an ‘Oops!’ It’s also got Lance Reddick from Fringe on form as a lead military man, James Woods up to no good at all and the brilliant Maggie Gyllenhaal.
WHITE HOUSE DOWN is the archetypal bad guys against the good guys but it’s also ingeniously political. I’m not saying it’ll help change American paranoia but it heaps on the patriotism and is intensely entertaining along the way.
[usr=4] WHITE HOUSE DOWN is out on Blu-ray and DVD on January 20th.
