White House Down

Two "White-House-under-attack-and-only-one-man-can-stop-it" movies came out this year.  They were both the results of the "high concept" pitch of "Die Hard in the White House."  Of the two, White House Down comes the closest to nailing that concept.  The troubling thing is, despite feeling more like Die Hard, White House Down just isn't very good.  It suffers from several problems that seem to hamper the enjoyment of it.  Let me tell you what they are:

1) Channing Tatum.  Hollywood, stop giving this guy the lead role in movies!  He's just terrible.  White House Down is yet another example of how poor his acting is.  He spends a large amount of the screen time talking to himself in what is clearly adlibbed dialogue which is intended to be funny.  But Tatum is not funny (exhibit A: 21 Jump Street).  He's basically in movies because the ladies like it when he takes his shirt off.  Well, the shirt stays on the entire time in White House Down thus negating any reason why he should be in this film.

 

2) The pacing.  This movie is over two hours long and the White House doesn't go down until almost an hour in!  Once the mercenaries seize the White House, the action goes by so quickly and erratically that often times you can't even tell what happened.  Also, the movie feels over when there's still nearly an hour left.  That makes the remainder feel like a chore.

 

3) Padded action sequences.  It is obvious that the filmmakers had tons of "cool" ideas about how to destroy iconic White House things, but the natural flow of a well-told story would have resulted in many of those action sequences being cut.  Well, that won't stop a big budget Hollywood filmmaker!  The President is saved, then Tatum abandons the President to save his daughter, then the President is captured, so Tatum has to go save the President again, but now his daughter's in danger again, so he must leave the President to save his child, but that results in the President getting into trouble, etc., etc.  It's extremely tedious and no amount of explosions or landmark destruction can fix that.

 

4) It gets worse as it goes.  Some movies are quality (whether good or bad) from start to finish.  Some movies get better as the story progresses.  White House Down belongs to that special third category: the movie that gets worse and worse.  This is that tedium grinding all the enjoyment out of the film.  It's like having a sick grandparent.  They started out so full of life but with age they just keep falling apart and you're kinda relieved when the pain stops and it's finally over.

 

5) The end.  It's one thing to have a film wherein the happy ending is that one man beat the odds to rescue the President of the United States.  It's even OK to have that man repair his damaged relationship with his daughter.  It is asking a bit much for the nations of the world to be so impressed with the President's fortitude when under attack, that all the world governments call him up to declare world peace.   But that's not all, the President has also just finished shutting down the military-industrial complex.  And not just a shut down, the heads of the military-industrial complex are going to prison!  Instead of flying off in a helicopter at the end, they all should've just hopped on a passing herd of unicorns which would sprout wings and fly them to the land of kittens and lollipops.

 

6)  The script.  The dialogue in particular.  It hurts to listen to this nonsense, especially the one-liners.  It's worse than an Expendables movie.  Plus, the writer appears to either know nothing about the workings of Washington or not care.

 

7) The special effects.  For a movie that cost $150 million, the CGI looks ridiculously cheap.  Like direct-to-video cheap.  I laughed out loud at most of the action sequences.  I've seen better effects from broke teenagers on YouTube.

 

White House Down tries to be good, but it just fails completely.  A lot of this is due to a terrible script and the retched direction of Roland Emmerich (surprise, surprise).  If you didn't watch Olympus Has Fallen yet, watch that instead (it's streaming on Netflix!).  If you did watch Olympus Has Fallen, just watch it again.  White House Down is just not worth your time.

 

4 out of 5