[Movie Review] White House Down (2013)

Posted on June 28, 2013 by thegrandshuckett in Movie Reviews // 1 Comment

Plot Summary: 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.

Director: Roland Emmerich

Writer: James Vanderbilt

Runtime: 131 min

Main Cast:

Channing Tatum as John Cale
Jamie Foxx as James Sawyer
Maggie Gyllenhaal as Carol Finnerty
Jason Clarke as Emil Stenz
Richard Jenkins as Eli Raphelson
James Woods as Martin Walker

Review: by Anthony and Lee

The Summer of 1998 brought the meteor falling to Earth movies Armageddon and Deep Impact. The Fall of 1998 had Antz and A Bug's Life, and the Fall of 2006 brought period pieces about magicians with The Prestige and The Illusionist. Given this history, it's not unusual for Hollywood to churn out two movies in such a short time span with similar plots. Described as Die Hard inside the White House, both Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down tackled this action movie set up, sharing many scenes and action movie tropes, but the main difference can be seen through Olympus Has Fallen's R rating and White House Down's PG-13 rating.

What We Liked:

While White House Down could not keep up with Olympus Has Fallen in the action category due to its PG-13 rating, it compensated adequately by being lighthearted and funny, despite not being categorized as a comedy.

Although the two movies shared a lot of scenes in common, they were handled differently, and White House Down certainly held its own in that regard. The politics were much more cutthroat, and the chain of command was highlighted in a way that was lacking in Olympus Has Fallen. In Olympus Has Fallen, everyone was acting as though the president’s death would be the end of the country, yet, in White House Down, the immediate conversations following the president’s capture realistically focused on ensuring the Vice President and the Speaker of the House were secured in separate locations.

What We Didn’t Like:

The acting was not very good. Jamie Foxx was trying too obviously to be Barak Obama and failed miserably, and Channing Tatum just does not have the skills to carry a movie as the leading role. The minor secondary and tertiary roles were played fine, but of course the focus was on Foxx and Tatum who didn’t manage to deliver outstanding performances.

Also, the daughter was used far too often as leverage. Real criminals would have murdered that little girl in cold blood as soon as they knew what she had done.

3.5

Summary

We didn’t have much to say about White House Down. It was an action movie, so of course it was completely unbelievable. Our biggest concern was how it was going to measure up to Olympus Has Fallen, and we were pleasantly suprised.

Sending