Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, and Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Screenplay by: James Vanderbilt
The White House is under attack again! This is the second time this year Hollywood's done this!
John Cale (Channing Tatum) is applying for a job in the secret service. On the day he interviews for the job, he takes his daughter, Emily (Joey King), on a tour of the White House with him. Well, on this particular day, weird stuff is to happen. The U.S. Capitol building falls under attack and so does the White House. This is no foreign attack, but an attack from within. Now it's up to Cale to save his daughter and the President of the United States (Jamie Foxx) from this danger.
I don't know about many of you, but I find this concept to be rather dark and disturbing. And frankly, it's not entirely original. We saw this already once this year in Olympus Has Fallen. The story in White House Down is simple, straight forward, and easy to follow. It takes a while for the story to really get going. The film spends too much time on the introduction, yet fails to fully develop the background. For the most part, it sets up the characters pretty well, and gives us plenty of clues about what is going to happen, but there are a few things that seem surprising to us as the film goes on.
There are a few plot twists that we totally can't see coming. For storyline purposes, this is kind of a problem because I think the introduction should give us some clues about everything that is going to happen. For viewing purposes, this is actually pretty cool. It means that we just have to watch until the very end of the film because what we think will happen may not actually happen. However, this film could have been a bit shorter had some of the introduction and some of the action sequences been cut out.
Pretty much all of the story takes place in the first twenty minutes or so of the film during this lengthy introduction and the rest of it is really just a lot of action packed violence. And when there are a lot of explosions involved in said violence, it's important to have decent special effects, something this film somewhat lacks. There are a few scenes in which it's pretty easy to tell what's animated and what's real.
There is a sense of intensity that should be involved in this kind of film. When a film is as dark and has action sequences that dominate the duration of it, I want to be exhausted by the time I walk out of the theater. I didn't have this sense when leaving the theater and this lack of intensity in the film makes for a somewhat less pleasant viewing experience. It's easy for your mind to wander during this film, and if it's during the actual attack on the White House, you probably won't miss much unless you're daydreaming for longer than ten minutes.
There's only one acting performance that stands out of all the actors' performances in this film. Jamie Foxx does not seem totally fit for the role of the President of the United States, but he executes this role in White House Down excellently and far better than I had thought he would. He brings a unique coolness to the role that isn't always seen in movies about the president. Channing Tatum isn't totally awesome in his role and neither is Maggie Gyllenhaal in hers. Most of the acting in this film is either average or not totally great.
White House Down proves not to be Roland Emmerich's best film. He's brought us some great disaster movies such as The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day. This film could have certainly been better with a better cast and a better telling of the story. While Olympus Has Fallen was not a tremendously great film either, there are certain elements to both of these films that are similar. In fact, these films are way too similar and one of them should not have been released this year because of how similar they are. They both tell the same story but with different characters, different directors, different visual effects, and different terrorists destroying the White House and trying to kill the president.
I give White House Down a C+.
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Screenplay by: James Vanderbilt
The White House is under attack again! This is the second time this year Hollywood's done this!
John Cale (Channing Tatum) is applying for a job in the secret service. On the day he interviews for the job, he takes his daughter, Emily (Joey King), on a tour of the White House with him. Well, on this particular day, weird stuff is to happen. The U.S. Capitol building falls under attack and so does the White House. This is no foreign attack, but an attack from within. Now it's up to Cale to save his daughter and the President of the United States (Jamie Foxx) from this danger.
I don't know about many of you, but I find this concept to be rather dark and disturbing. And frankly, it's not entirely original. We saw this already once this year in Olympus Has Fallen. The story in White House Down is simple, straight forward, and easy to follow. It takes a while for the story to really get going. The film spends too much time on the introduction, yet fails to fully develop the background. For the most part, it sets up the characters pretty well, and gives us plenty of clues about what is going to happen, but there are a few things that seem surprising to us as the film goes on.
There are a few plot twists that we totally can't see coming. For storyline purposes, this is kind of a problem because I think the introduction should give us some clues about everything that is going to happen. For viewing purposes, this is actually pretty cool. It means that we just have to watch until the very end of the film because what we think will happen may not actually happen. However, this film could have been a bit shorter had some of the introduction and some of the action sequences been cut out.
Pretty much all of the story takes place in the first twenty minutes or so of the film during this lengthy introduction and the rest of it is really just a lot of action packed violence. And when there are a lot of explosions involved in said violence, it's important to have decent special effects, something this film somewhat lacks. There are a few scenes in which it's pretty easy to tell what's animated and what's real.
There is a sense of intensity that should be involved in this kind of film. When a film is as dark and has action sequences that dominate the duration of it, I want to be exhausted by the time I walk out of the theater. I didn't have this sense when leaving the theater and this lack of intensity in the film makes for a somewhat less pleasant viewing experience. It's easy for your mind to wander during this film, and if it's during the actual attack on the White House, you probably won't miss much unless you're daydreaming for longer than ten minutes.
There's only one acting performance that stands out of all the actors' performances in this film. Jamie Foxx does not seem totally fit for the role of the President of the United States, but he executes this role in White House Down excellently and far better than I had thought he would. He brings a unique coolness to the role that isn't always seen in movies about the president. Channing Tatum isn't totally awesome in his role and neither is Maggie Gyllenhaal in hers. Most of the acting in this film is either average or not totally great.
White House Down proves not to be Roland Emmerich's best film. He's brought us some great disaster movies such as The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day. This film could have certainly been better with a better cast and a better telling of the story. While Olympus Has Fallen was not a tremendously great film either, there are certain elements to both of these films that are similar. In fact, these films are way too similar and one of them should not have been released this year because of how similar they are. They both tell the same story but with different characters, different directors, different visual effects, and different terrorists destroying the White House and trying to kill the president.
I give White House Down a C+.
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