White House Down 3 / 4 In the tradition of story ideas racing to get seen by audiences in the Hollywood machine, White House Down is to the recent Olympus Has Fallen from earlier this year, the Armageddon to Deep Impact and the Finding Nemo to Shark Tale. It is practically the same story as its counterpart but is less self-serious and willing to make jokes far more often. It might be too comedic for its own good in the high stakes positions it puts itself in. Whereas that other film from the same idea, had clarity always when it should’ve. Both have our nation’s capitol, its leader and his team getting taken over far too easy. But this movie is still relevant to the premise started with Olympus Has Fallen in that besides both films orchestrating very similarly, they offer two different commentaries on the political warfare of today between our country and the others who oppose us. When underachieving policeman in John Cale (Channing Tatum) gets the interview for the position at the White House he’s waited for his whole life, he decides to bring his daughter with him who is on rocky terms with his parental negligence while his ex-wife is on the same terms for his ex-husband negligence. That position he’s interviewing for is to be a secret service man for the President of the United States (Jamie Foxx). When a terrorist group strikes with a blindside approach inside the White House, Cale must prove his worth for his dream job, his daughter and for the sake of the President’s life as he gets trapped inside with others and is the sole escapee from the terrorist captors. What starts off as a take your kid to work day fantasy, turns into an audition for being the action hero to save the President. Kind of like a formula taken from The Apprentice. The film gives us a villain who gets his identity given away too early and a hero who is charming, heroic and sensitively adequate. The script sometimes gets sucked into the importance of an individual’s story instead of the global/political catastrophe at hand. At certain points, the President does things to live up to the image in the eyes of Cale’s daughter. Then Cale’s daughter happens to be the national face of this event several times to progress her character. But yet, writer Vanderbilt knows when there is no compromise as at several times, Cale’s daughter would have been killed for the sake of national security if not for plot devices as the character’s decisions holding the girl’s life in their hands were militantly correct. There’s a part when John Cale has to decide between his daughter’s life and the President’s, and Vanderbilt finds a way to be politically correct and yet morally as well. He gets the best of both worlds for the film’s action hero and it’s nicely done. When the script stays afloat with its commentary on real life politics and channels the feelings of both the Republican and Democratic parties, it’s at its best. While Olympus Has Fallen articulated what North Korea feels about us, this film articulates all the demons of our War In Iraq and of the middle east in general. Both films give commentaries that make them smarter in what they are trying to tell us in opposed to how they try to entertain us. This film has someone at one point telling Tatum’s Cale that the President is selling us out to the Arabs. Trust me, that is political commentary and not imagined dialogue for the story. The script touches on everything from our nation’s anger towards the deaths of our troops to the abandonment of intelligence moles in foreign regions to the desired choice to rid our enemies and just nuke the entire middle east. Writer James Vanderbilt speaks the truth of both parties but truly favors the democrats. Channing Tatum is the same character as Gerard Butler in Olympus Has Fallen in terms of his survival obstacles; their adversity is different in that Tatum’s is about overcoming criticism put on him whereas Butler’s was about overcoming self-disappointment. He makes Cale a killer and yet gives him a player’s charm with a father’s sensitivity. At one short stretch, Vanderbilt had me thinking that Tatum’s character forgot about the status of his daughter despite his goal of protecting the president. Jamie Foxx plays the President who is obviously replicated after Obama. I felt Foxx was funny when the role called on him to be, but his slang wasn’t reformed enough to be the free leader of our country. I also believe that having our President put on his Jordan sneakers and firing a rocket launcher is in one sense, a cheap route for laughs and yet ironically funny. Jason Clarke plays a man who is nearly the same one from Zero Dark Thirty; but this guy eschews all the anger from the shortcomings and disappointment of that role in Bigelow’s movie from last year. James Woods comes back from the grave as he seems to have been dormant for nearly a decade. He’s back with real presence and a facial paralysis making him more interesting than he already was. Roland Emmerich has been obsessed since the mid-90’s with Independence Day in making big epic blockbusters with a minor in wit and a major in action. Here, he is no less different and has given us his political thriller action movie whereas in the past he has given us his alien invasion movie (ID4), giant monster movie (Godzilla), natural disaster movie (Day After Tomorrow) and the recent end of the world movie (2012). White House Down is the standard for fare from this filmmaker. It’s pure entertainment with thoughtful commentary and a knack for having more fun sometimes than it should. Sounds like a fit for a good time at the movies in the summer.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 17:27:20 +0000
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