Shameless Pile of Stuff: Movie Review: White House Down

Monday, July 21, 2014

Movie Review: White House Down

White House Down
Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, James Woods
Director: Roland Emmerich
Centropolis Entertainment, Mythology Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, 2013, USA

The President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) is planning to pull the American troops from the Middle East. The defense industry is not happy about the plan and neither is Secret Service Chief Martin Walker (James Woods). Police Officer John Cale (Channing Tatum) is trying to get a job at Secret Service and also tries to improve his relationship with his daughter Emily (Joey King) by bringing her to visit White House.

Emily and Cale attending tourist tour

Security Chief Walker and President Sawyer

Secret Service agent Finnerty

The job interview however goes bad. John and Emily attend the tourist tour when terrorists detonate a bomb in Capitol building and attack White House. Cale has to go rescue his daughter Die Hard -style. First he has a chance to rescue the President. Outside Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal) from Secret Service is trying to plan on counter measures. She is also the contact person of Cale.

It's again a lone hero against terrorists

Freeze! or the President will shoot

Testing bulletproofness of the presidential liimo

This is a second of the action films released in 2013 that have the White House attacked by terrorists. Compared to Olympus Has Fallen this has a little less serious attitude. The baddies are very 80s style, with a classical music listening hacker Tyler, Bennett (from Commando) look-alike Killick and mixed bunch of ex-soldiers/mercenaries. Even the president gets to be an action hero, and Emily helps the heroes by getting covert information about the bad guys. There is also a tour guide (Nicolas Wright) who finally snaps when the bad guys ruin the antiques.

Entertaining action film in the spirit of 80-90s action films.

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