White House Down (2013)

Genre

Action | Thriller

Director

Roland Emmerich

Country

USA

Cast

Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Joey King, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, James Woods, Nicolas Wright, Jimmi Simpson, Lance Reddick, Rachelle Lefevre, Kevin Rankin, Michael Murphy, Matt Craven, Jake Weber, Peter Jacobson, Barbara Williams, Anthony Lemke, Vincent Leclerc, Garcelle Beauvais, Kyle Gatehouse, Falk Hentschel, Jackie Geary

Storyline

While on a tour of the White House with his young daughter, a Capitol policeman (Channing Tatum) springs into action to save his child (Joey King) and protect the president (Jamie Foxx) from a heavily armed group of paramilitary invaders.

Opinion

2013 apparently was the White House movies year and I managed to avoid them all. I recall seeing the trailer to this one though, and I even added it onto my watchlist. Not sure if because the trailer was exciting or because I was hoping to see a shirtless Channing Tatum.

Anyway, back to business, "White House Down" is an enjoyable and at times fun action flick that does fail on the thriller front.

The plot isn't the film's strong suit. It is poor and the narrative is awful as well, and it resembles a lot a Die Hard movie taking place in the White House. It does provide a little of a backstory concerning the motivation of the bad guy, but overall it is predictable and loaded with clichés.

That being said, it is pretty obvious that Roland Emmerich had a hell of a work to do to make this film work at least a little bit. I frankly don't know how he did it, but despite the poor writing and the predictability of the story, he managed to craft a film that is quite enjoyable and manages to keep you watching.

While the character development and dialogue keep on dragging down the film, the action does quite the opposite. It isn't anything extraordinary, but it is neither awful, and makes the film a little bit more tolerable.

As for the acting, Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx have a good comedic chemistry that manages to entertain, and the latter pulls off a quite good performance as the President of the United States. There was no shirtless Channing Tatum, but the two leading actors are arguably the best part of the film.