Director: Roland Emmerich
Writer: James Vanderbilt
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, James Woods and Richard Jenkins
Studio: Columbia
“White House Down” seems to suffer from an identify crisis, serious political thriller vs comedic quips. And it appears to be nothing more than a vehicle for Channing to perform impossible heroic stunts. I’m surprised Channing would include himself as a producer on this boring piece, very little different from Olympus Has Fallen of a couple months back. And it is an obvious promotion for the Obama administration– you know Obama good and everyone opposed to him is bad.
None of the characters stand out. I’m not asking a Joker show here but at least the antagonist needs to have his motive clear. Twists appear completely out of the blue, I mean it should be a good thing but there should always be a good justification so that all the bits and pieces join together to make the twist believable. Simply saying how would you react if Alfred from the Batman trilogy turned out to be the villain in the last scene. Movies in which action does most of the talking, need to have deep rooted and believable characters, and this starts from the writing stage till the final casting but unfortunately this is one of the weakest aspects of the movie. I mean a simple way to gauge that would be to ask yourself, how badly you want the villain killed or the love story to end on a positive note or the leading man bash up the antagonist in the final act. In this movie, I felt none of those.
Other than the decent chemistry between Tatum and Foxx, there is no enjoyment to be found anywhere in “White House Down.” Bad guys are duly dispatched, the world is once again free from nuclear meltdown and a corn pone ending is wrapped around a safe PG-13 rating that makes everything all right and somehow feasible.
RELEASE DATE: 06/28/2013
