White House Down (Blu-ray + DVD) Reviews

Director Roland Emmerich’s name is associated with some of the most lucrative (as well as some of the worst) summer blockbusters of all time. You don’t go into a Roland Emmerich movie to think, you go into a Roland Emmerich movie to watch cheesy dialogue drip from the mouths of big name actors in-between money shots of exploding buildings, exploding alien spacecraft, exploding American cities, an exploding White House, or exploding… you get the picture. Filmmakers like Emmerich can produce genuinely thrilling, albeit inane, films when firing on all cylinders. Emmerich has and can muster up the creative juices to do so, and White House Down looked to me like an honest-to-goodness ‘80s throwback picture he was going to be directing the crap out of. God knows a movie like White House Down isn’t expected to deliver a complex narrative, just to deliver on the promise of epic large-scale action sequences set in and around the White House. Simple, right?

The problem with movies like White House Down is how they completely underestimate the necessity of an R rating. When you have an action film rife with gunplay and a cadre of violent encounters, continuously cutting away just before the point of impact or not letting the camera linger on the aftermath seriously strains the action. White House Down is the kind of action vehicle that required an R rating. Hell, there are PG-13 shoot ‘em ups that have more oomph and ferocity than even the most ridiculous action sequences White House Down has to offer. The gun battles and fistfights are well choreographed, though a bit choppy in places, and there’s an impressive amount of destruction. A movie like this needs a director that can and will deliver hard, punchy, and tough action bits. Simply put, Emmerich doesn't have the balls to push the PG-13 as hard as he could have, let alone rally for the audience-dividing R.

It’s ironic, then, that so much of White House Down copy-and-pastes wholesale an innumerable amount of motifs from the original Die Hard. Some of the similarities are subtler than others, like White House Down’s eccentric computer hacker Skip Tyler (Jimmi Simpson) looking and acting an awful lot like Die Hard’s eccentric tech specialist, Theo (Clarence Gilyard, Jr). Non-fans of the Die Hard franchise will miss ones like those, but you just can’t miss ones like Channing Tatum’s John McCla… John CALE dispatching terrorists all by his lonesome, isolated from the outside, spouting quippy one-liners, and halfway through the film stripping down to a dirty white vest. Emmerich even thought it wise to throw in a scene with our hero climbing up an elevator shaft while eavesdropping on the baddies' plans. Borrowing from a masterpiece like Die Hard isn’t uncommon, and in the hands of the right director could have worked well within the context of the movie. Emmerich isn’t up to the task, unfortunately, and watching Tatum – charismatic & well-cast as he may be - do his best John McClane impression only serves to remind this viewer how much I'd rather be watching Die Hard at this point.

One thing White House Down has going for it is its talented starring & supporting players. Everyone is having a good time and that sense of fun is infectious. A movie like this doesn’t require top notch talent so it’s a bit curious that Emmerich enlisted the likes of James Woods, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Richard Jenkins, and Jamie Foxx to play principal characters. These are all quality actors with proven acting chops. An action flick like White House Down doesn’t do a cast of this magnitude the justice it deserves. The roles could have been filled by anyone, really, and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. The film’s real stars are its (cheap looking) CGI effects and ever increasing number of explosions. White House Down's cast do everything they can with writer James Vanderbilt’s totally inconsequential script but the human element was never a selling point to begin with and it shows. 25 years later and Die Hard is still proof that a fun action movie doesn't have to sacrifice its characters for its set pieces and that’s something its sea of imitators don’t seem to understand.

Speaking of Vanderbilt’s script, it’s just as woefully unoriginal as Emmerich’s overwrought directing. Any person with even a passing knowledge of contemporary action films will be telegraphing each plot twist, flat joke, and sappy melodramatic moment well ahead of time. The script tries with all its might to build suspense, but the oh-so-predictable plot doesn’t leave much room for it. White House Down finds comfort in a well-worn archetype and there isn’t anything wrong with that, it just does it in the most contrived & rote ways imaginable. White House Down also suffers from conflicting tone. Emmerich can’t decide if he wants his movie to satirize modern action conventions or be a catalyst for them. When a film casts Jamie Foxx as the president of the United States and has him reference the importance of his Michael Jordan sneakers, you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. White House Down tries too hard to be witty and self-aware but does it in all the worst ways. It doesn’t take itself seriously, so when we’re handed a sequence that piles on the dramatics, how in the world are we supposed to take any of it seriously?

If the Die Hard franchise taught us anything, it’s that these kinds of movies need a good central villain for our battered hero to do battle with. Jason Clarke’s rogue CIA agent, Emil Stenz, fits the bill nicely. Or rather, he would have fit the bill nicely if Emmerich had the good sense to give him anything else to work with other than snarling threatening lines and delivering some of the most generically “bad guy” dialogue you can possibly think of. Clarke must have set a record for the number of times he promises to kill someone. Seriously, this guy is every villain cliché rolled up into one. Subtlety isn’t on this one's menu, obviously, but the way Emmerich handles Stenz is insulting. Clarke is a fine actor and manages to mold Stenz into something resembling a memorable villain in lieu of his asinine dialogue, so it makes it all the more disappointing that he’s used so ineffectively. You could argue that James Woods’ Martin Walker has the meatier villain role, and with that you’d be right. Age hasn’t been kind to him, however, and Walker comes across as an incompetent, overweight, and altogether useless bad guy because of it. Woods is a marvelous actor that simply doesn’t belong here.

Is there anything good about White House Down then? Sure. If you’re in the mood for a thoroughly absurd action flick and aren’t expecting noteworthy originality or believability, this'll give you about what you’d expect. Emmerich’s action sequences have impressive scope but his execution is frustratingly muddled. Still, they’re serviceable on the most basic levels. Stuff blows up and only a truly abysmal director could muck up the carnal joys of watching White House Down’s level of destruction unfold. There’s a lot of action peppered throughout that wears the film’s PG-13 rating on its sleeve. If you’re not the sort that cares for the graphic violence usually associated with films of this ilk you should be pleasantly surprised by this one’s restraint.

For someone like me that grew up on movies like this, that wants an obviously R-rated movie to be an R-rated movie, you’re likely to get more and more frustrated as it wears on. And it’s probably not the PG-13 that hurts this one as much as it is the director behind it. White House Down, for all of its bluster and thunderous action sequences, is so painfully boring. PG-13 action films don’t have to be this bland as so many other pictures have proven. Everything about it is hollow, unimaginative, and mind-numbingly dull. Having lots of action means little if it’s stiff, poorly staged action. Movies like this one live and die by their action sequences, and White House Down’s are so diluted you’ll be feeling next to nothing as you watch them limp by. And how does a movie with a $160 million budget have CGI this bad? Throwing $160 million at the screen sure as hell does not a good action movie make. It's a chore to sit through and that's a shame because White House Down had serious potential.