White House Down (2013)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Capitol Policeman John Cale has just been denied his dream job with the Secret Service protecting President James Sawyer. Not wanting to let down his little girl with the news, he takes her on a tour of the White House, when the complex is overtaken by a heavily armed paramilitary group. Now, with the nation's government falling into chaos and time running out, it's up to Cale to save the president, his daughter, and the country.
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What critics say influenced White House Down
Unlike so many '90s films, though, the form that WHD takes is not exactly " Die Hard in an X", with X referring in this case to the White House; it was this exact tack taken by this spring's Olympus Has Fallen , a cheaply-made rushed knock-off of WHD that, as it turns out, is almost precisely at the same quality level as the movie it was copying, though for different reasons.
Director Roland Emmerich takes a break from blowing up the entire world (and completely blowing Anonymous ) to direct this Die Hard knock-off without shame, and he’s perfectly suited to the material, transforming a concept that Olympus Has Fallen made gruff and violent into an over the top crowd-pleaser.
While there’s more than a little of a “Die Hard” vibe here (more than in “Die Hard 5,” actually), Emmerich and screenwriter James Vanderbilt wisely don’t try to turn Tatum into a junior Bruce Willis.
White House Down is yet another take on the old Die Hard formula, with more than a few nods to the fun Air Force One (1997) and to Emmerich's own Independence Day (1996).
With its Die Hard -in-the-White-House premise already taken out in a pre-emptive strike by Olympus Has Fallen earlier this year, White House Down suddenly had to do more than just rely on its high concept.
You see, the bad guys have also brought along a computer hacker (Jimmi Simpson)—one of the evil kind who, in an apparent nod to Die Hard , enjoys blasting Beethoven symphonies as he cracks the NORAD missile launch codes, one by one.
This affords Tatum and Foxx a lot of shared screen time, in which they project an effortless, ingratiating chemistry that recalls Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the first “Lethal Weapon” pic, the characters bonding as fathers and patriots whenever they aren’t dodging bullets.
What made classics like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon so great?
If “Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard” had a baby, the offspring would look something like this.
That stunt occurs in one of the sequences of antic humor — in this case a Keystone Kops car chase — which, despite the tonal strangeness alongside the wanton destruction, prove that Foxx and Tatum are able heirs to the “Lethal Weapon” brand of brothers-in-arms banter.
With almost no storytelling logic or topical relevance, clumsy plot twists and absurd motives for its villains, it resembles a rejected idea for another Lethal Weapon sequel.
White House Down is yet another take on the old Die Hard formula, with more than a few nods to the fun Air Force One (1997) and to Emmerich's own Independence Day (1996).
The Presidential action hero has evolved from Harrison Ford yelling "Get off my plane!" in "Air Force One" to Foxx kicking away from a bad guy's grasp with "Get your hands off my Jordans!"
Then the president of the United States fires a rocket launcher out the window of a car while terrorists are machine-gunning him—a vicious burlesque, perhaps, of Harrison Ford's President Bad-Ass back in Air Force One.
This isn’t Air Force One, with the president kicking much ass - President Sawyer has to put on his glasses before taking a shot at a bad guy.
Double down on a “Die Hard” and “Air Force One” marathon as this second take of D.C. destruction isn’t worth your financial endorsement.
I'd like to have one of these guilt-driven security guys protecting me: Clint Eastwood in "In The Line of Fire" (1993) who failed to save the life of John F. Kennedy; "Olympus Has Fallen" bodyguard ( Gerard Butler ), who did rescue the president, but not the first lady; Channing Tatum specifically, for every "Sexiest Man Alive" reason, plus his dance-trained agility and his desire to impress and bond with his estranged daughter.
Director Roland Emmerich has attacked the White House before, in "Independence Day," a much better film, which is referenced with a little throwaway line.
The latest epic from master of disaster Roland Emmerich is his most entertaining since “Independence Day” — amusingly referenced by a White House tour guide in the new film, which is a lot funnier than you’d guess from some of the trailers.
Directed by Roland Emmerich (the guy who blew up the White House once before in Independence Day), it has that old-school buddy action vibe, but it falls just short of really working.
White House Down is yet another take on the old Die Hard formula, with more than a few nods to the fun Air Force One (1997) and to Emmerich's own Independence Day (1996).
Directed by Roland Emmerich in his grand-scale action vein ("Independence Day," "2012"), "White House Down" escalates the pressure and stays ahead of the audience without ever degenerating into a series of random jolts.
"Independence Day" director Roland Emmerich has blown up the White House before — it's even referred to in "White House Down" — in an alien attack that was more credible than events portrayed here in a screenplay by "The Amazing Spider-Man" co-writer James Vanderbilt.
All of Emmerich’s movies since Stargate have operated by identifying pop-cultural touchstones and myths (JFK’s fabled secret tunnels serve the same function in this movie as Area 51 did in Independence Day) and then turning their destruction into spectacle.
Speaking of coincidence, “White House Down” was directed by Stuttgart, Germany-born Roland Emmerich, pop-sci-fi auteur of such films as “Stargate” and “Independence Day,” and this is the second time he’s blown up the White House on screen.
Sure, he had previously helmed "Stargate" and Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Universal Soldier," but such destruction was the beginning of the German director becoming something of a latter-day Irwin Allen.
Director Roland Emmerich takes a break from blowing up the entire world (and completely blowing Anonymous ) to direct this Die Hard knock-off without shame, and he’s perfectly suited to the material, transforming a concept that Olympus Has Fallen made gruff and violent into an over the top crowd-pleaser.
In other words, it’s exactly like every other Roland Emmerich movie you’ve seen, with Anonymous the only exclusion.
For a brief, shining moment back in 2011, it looked as though director Roland Emmerich was finally ready to leave behind the monotony of blowing up everything in sight in nearly every movie he made by making the fascinating Shakespeare drama “Anonymous.”
After surprising us for once with the thoughtful, entertaining Anonymous , director Roland Emmerich has -- with White House Down -- gone back to making his usual noisy, explosive, brain-dead movies.
And when not compulsively re-enacting the annihilation of all that America holds dear, the German-born director has been known to espouse radical-fringe ideology—namely, in his last film Anonymous , the belief that William Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of the plays published under his name.
"White House Down" is lit by cinematographer Anna Foerster (2011's " Anonymous ") with a romantic golden hue that affectionately portrays Washington, D.C. with much reverence (scenes set around the exterior of the White House, clearly green screen, are less convincing), but some pretty location shooting and aerial footage does not a successful action flick make.
An important asset to director Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day," "2012") and screenwriter James Vanderbilt's ("The Amazing Spider-Man") propulsive setup is in production designer Kirk M. Petruccelli's ("The Incredible Hulk") White House re-creation.
Director Roland Emmerich has proved himself to be a specialist at it, with lug-headed yet appealing crowd-pleasers such as "The Day After Tomorrow," "Independence Day" and "2012."
Popcorn director Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day"/"2012"/"Godzilla") helms this overlong idiotic noisy summer blockbuster action pic that hits rock bottom in his Hollywood oeuvre.
Not on the level of 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow and certainly not on the scale of Independence Day, but when you consider what he has to work with, the action scenes spark some interest.
It’s a cute sentiment, and it also serves as a shockingly good description of director Roland Emmerich’s filmography (“ 2012 ,” “ The Day After Tomorrow ,” “Independence Day”).
It’s also quite different from the disaster flicks “The Day After Tomorrow” and “2012” that he fell into a few years ago.
The movie comes from schlockmaster Roland Emmerich, who's made a lot of complete junk ("10,000 BC," "2012," "Godzilla") and the enjoyable "Independence Day." "WHD" demonstrates the big difference between an awesomely, innocently ridiculous live-action cartoon and a violent cliché-a-thon that tries to get the crowd to scream, "America, [Bleep] Yeah!"
German director Roland Emmerich, whose resume includes a handful of doomsday pics ("Independence Day," "Godzilla"), goes light on believability and heavy on gunfire.
Roland Emmerich sure has an edifice complex: The filmmaker who severed the Statue of Liberty in The Day After Tomorrow, laid waste to Manhattan in Godzilla, and dive-bombed the White House in Independence Day is back for another shot at the White House.
Perhaps the greatest surprise it offers is that in this summer of wall-to-wall apocalypse (Oblivion, After Earth , This Is the End, Pacific Rim, Elysium, The World's End), the maestro of global mayhem who brought us Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 has chosen to tone things down with the relatively localized pandemonium of a plot to capture the president.
Like most Emmerich movies (remember the 1998 remake of "Godzilla"?), "White House Down" is moronic; has a welcome if obvious sense of humor; and overstays its welcome; at 131 minutes, it's even a bit longer than the infamous 8,445-word Inaugural Address credited with killing William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia a month after refusing to wear a coat and hat on the cold, wet day he took the oath of office.
The director of "Independence Day," "Godzilla," "The Patriot," "The Day After Tomorrow," and "2012" returns again to big-budget mayhem involving the destruction of national monuments with "White House Down," one of those cheerfully implausible yet somehow not too stupid pieces of entertainment that have come to define summertime moviegoing.
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In an echo of the spring of 1997, when "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano" promised moviegoers death by lava, and the summer of 1998, when "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" threatened audiences with extinction via asteroid, "White House Down" arrives three months and a week after "Olympus Has Fallen," a very similar story about a tough agent turned rescuer/avenger after circumstances trap him inside the White House during an armed assault that -- worst case scenario -- could escalate into nuclear war.
When we think back to other disaster film presidents, we find people like Morgan Freeman (“Deep Impact”), Bill Pullman (“Independence Day”), and Danny Glover (“2012”), all of whom seem like they really could be the president.
Of course, on this day, Agent Walker (James Woods channeling Ed Harris in The Rock), head of the President’s Secret Service, has planned an orchestrated attack—like Harris, he’s been betrayed by his country over the death of son in a covert mission—that will unleash a gang of America’s enemies on the White House.
White House Down es, sin lugar a dudas, un extraordinario regreso al mejor cine del género desde los tiempos maravillosos en los que los aficionados de verdad al mismo (no, no me estoy refiriendo a ti, saga de Fast and the Furious), disfrutaban de clásicos (y en ocasiones hasta obras maestras) como Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Air Force One o The Rock.
In an echo of the spring of 1997, when "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano" promised moviegoers death by lava, and the summer of 1998, when "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" threatened audiences with extinction via asteroid, "White House Down" arrives three months and a week after "Olympus Has Fallen," a very similar story about a tough agent turned rescuer/avenger after circumstances trap him inside the White House during an armed assault that -- worst case scenario -- could escalate into nuclear war.
They have an intriguing chemistry with a solid give-and-take dynamic better suited for a buddy action film like “Bad Boys.”
Setting aside the question of whether the world really needed a second White House takeover movie, in terms of sheer craftsmanship and professionalism, “ White House Down” is to “Olympus Has Fallen” what “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was to the 1985 Richard Chamberlain-Sharon Stone version of “King Solomon’s Mines.”
In an echo of the spring of 1997, when "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano" promised moviegoers death by lava, and the summer of 1998, when "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" threatened audiences with extinction via asteroid, "White House Down" arrives three months and a week after "Olympus Has Fallen," a very similar story about a tough agent turned rescuer/avenger after circumstances trap him inside the White House during an armed assault that -- worst case scenario -- could escalate into nuclear war.
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In an echo of the spring of 1997, when "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano" promised moviegoers death by lava, and the summer of 1998, when "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" threatened audiences with extinction via asteroid, "White House Down" arrives three months and a week after "Olympus Has Fallen," a very similar story about a tough agent turned rescuer/avenger after circumstances trap him inside the White House during an armed assault that -- worst case scenario -- could escalate into nuclear war.
Smart and spunky, Emily suggests a potentially more amusing rewrite in which a rogue urchin does to the White House invaders what Macaulay Culkin did to those burglars in "Home Alone."
Firstly, her character is a clichéd, girl wonder composite that would be out of place in a “Home Alone” film.