Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for fleeting profanity and relentless action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.28.13
You gotta give ’em credit:
Despite an invasion premise that confines the primary characters to the
labyrinthine White House interior, this crowd-pleasing action epic manages to
work in a car chase.
And a reasonably plausible car
chase, at that.
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| Having worked their way through secret tunnels that lead beneath the White House, Cale (Channing Tatum, right) and President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) are dismayed to discover that the bad guys have blocked the way with a complicated bomb. Worse yet, irritated thugs with guns are right behind them... |
Director Roland Emmerich and
writer James Vanderbilt actually deserve credit for far more than that. Despite
arriving late to this high-profile copycat party, White House Down is
superior to spring’s Olympus Has Fallen: a much smarter script, vastly better
characters and a superior blend of action and hell-for-leather humor.
THIS is the way I expect our
heads of state to behave: defiant and resourceful in the face of death, rather
than the cowardly, impotent weenies who populated Olympus Has Fallen.
Granted, both films offer the
same sort of quasi-political hokum, but White House Down delivers the
(mostly) one-man derring-do with far more style. Despite a self-indulgent
running time of 131 minutes, Emmerich and editor Adam Wolfe keep the pace
crisp, the tension coiled and the heroics more or less reasonable.
Vanderbilt’s narrative is a
series of clever teases, with every small triumph offset by a newly discovered
setback; we therefore cheer each cathartic victory while remaining invested in
the primary goal that, vexingly, remains out of reach.
Best of all, we have a solid
quartet of villains to boo and hiss: a turncoat mastermind and three delectably
unscrupulous associates, each playing his part with gleefully malevolent brio.
After all, heroes are measured by their adversaries.
John Cale (Channing Tatum), a
capable D.C. policeman, is less successful on the home front, having let down
his young daughter, Emily (Joey King), once too often. This comes as no
surprise to ex-wife Melanie (Rachelle Lefevre), who, while sympathetic, doesn’t
put much stock in Cale’s insistence that he’s trying to atone for past
mistakes. Emily, also not impressed, prefers to call her estranged father by
his first name.
Hoping to recover some ground,
Cale scores a second White House pass so that Emily can tag along when he
applies for his dream job, as a member of the Secret Service staff assigned to
protect President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). Alas, Special Agent Finnerty (Maggie
Gyllenhaal) also knows too much about Cale’s various character flaws, in part
thanks to a long-ago affair with him. She thus denies him the shot.
Not wanting to admit this newest
failure to Emily, Cale yields to her desire for a White House tour. We’ve
learned by now that Emily is a hard-core political enthusiast, with a passion
for detail and a dreamy-eyed crush on President Sawyer; she therefore knows the
answers to all the tricky questions posed by the tour guide (Nicolas Wright, as
Donnie), much to the latter’s amused frustration.
Alas, this just happens to be the
day when Walker (James Woods), a 25-year Secret Service veteran, goes rogue and
orchestrates a complex revenge plot. Within minutes, thanks to an assault team
that cleverly infiltrates the White House — and let’s hope it wouldn’t be
anywhere near this easy, in real life! — the demolished Capitol dome has
crashed into the lower floors, Walker has the president at gunpoint, 70 or so
tour members are being held hostage, and Cale has been separated from his
daughter (who chose this moment to use one of the posh White House bathrooms).
Security aides manage to get Vice
President Hammond (Michael Murphy) airborne in Air Force One, while Speaker of
the House Eli Raphelson (Richard Jenkins) is similarly safe in the military
command center overseen by spit-and-polish Gen. Caulfield (Lance Reddick).
The invading commandos are led by
the vicious Stenz (Jason Clarke) and the somewhat unstable Killick (Kevin
Rankin), both of whom think nothing of offing a high-level politico in order to
secure compliance from the others. Meanwhile, über-hacker Tyler (Jimmi
Simpson), happily ensconced in the White House emergency bunker, methodically
punches through all computer security protocols in order to gain access to ...
we know not what. But we can imagine it’ll be bad, if he succeeds.
Oh, and outside military forces
are prevented from mounting a rescue mission because a) they don’t want to risk
injuring President Sawyer; and b) the baddies have control of the White House
roof, where they’re able to repel any incursions with RPGs.
(Yeah, those are thin excuses,
but hey: We’ve got a movie to enjoy. Go with the flow.)
Can Cale make a difference? Will
the sun rise in the east?
Tatum makes an engaging action
hero from the “I’ve no other choice” school, as opposed to guys who know what they're
doing at all times. Cale’s desire to find and protect his daughter is ample
motivation: at times a stronger incentive than saving a president he didn’t
vote for (one of this film’s many droll running gags).
That said, Cale quickly links up
with Sawyer, and the two become a resourceful team: The former has the military
training — tours of duty in Afghanistan, carefully noted early on — while the
latter knows “his house” inside and out.
Foxx is careful to maintain
Sawyer’s limitations: He’s a decisive and quick-thinking strategist, to be
sure, but otherwise a vulnerable head of state quite content to follow Cale’s
lead (as opposed to, for example, Harrison Ford’s commando-style president in
1997’s Air Force One). This is smart synergy on the part of Emmerich and
Vanderbilt: Cale and Sawyer cleverly complement each other, just as Tatum and
Foxx make excellent use of the initially prickly wariness between these two
characters, which (of course) quickly blossoms into mutual trust.
The stand-out performance,
however, comes from young Joey King’s bold and plucky Emily: definitely the
toughest, smartest and most quick-witted little girl we’ve seen in a long time.
King pulls it all off quite credibly; when she screws her little face into a
furious sneer and defiantly stares down Stenz and Killick, angrily telling one
to get out of her face, it’s hard to resist shouting, “You go, girl!”
King earns considerable good will
throughout this film, which is essential, if we’re to greet her climactic act
without rolling our eyes. (Emmerich rarely resists an opportunity for some
old-fashioned, heart-thumping displays of patriotism.)
Gyllenhaal is properly focused
and steely eyed as the capable Finnerty, while Simpson — a popular character
actor with an active résumé of big-screen and TV roles — has a field day as the
droll, lollypop-sucking Tyler.
Woods chews up the scenery in
similar style, as the vengeance-fueled Walker. Woods always is at his best as
an impatient villain who grows increasingly annoyed with his underlings, contempt
dripping from every hard-bitten syllable. He’s the pluperfect criminal
mastermind astonished by the interference of one lone guy: a juicy addition to
the bad-guy template established so well by Alan Rickman, in 1988’s Die Hard (the only noteworthy entry in that series).
The always capable Jenkins, with
a long history of becoming his roles, looks and sounds every inch the seasoned
politician. Wright provides welcome comic relief as the tour guide, although
his character isn’t quite as frivolous as he seems. Andrew Simms memorably depicts
a Rush Limbaugh-ish media gasbag, and Jackie Geary makes the most of her small
role as a White House staffer smitten by Cale.
I’m less satisfied, however, with
Murphy’s portrayal of Hammond as an indecisive idiot, a numb-nuts character who
would have been more at home in Olympus Has Fallen. Really, must cinema’s
U.S. vice presidents be depicted like Nigel Bruce’s bumbling Watson in the Basil
Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies? It’s the one glaringly sour note in
Vanderbilt’s otherwise solid script.
That quibble aside, Vanderbilt
knows his way around twisty scenarios, having adapted Robert Graysmith’s book
for director David Fincher’s 2007 handling of Zodiac. Vanderbilt is clever
about details, so pay close attention to the opening act; clues are dropped
that’ll later prove quite significant.
Stunt coordinator John Stoneham
Jr. and visual effects supervisors Volker Engel and Marc Weigert are kept busy.
The aforementioned car chase is a corker, as are sequences involving assault
helicopters and jet fighters. Yes, Tatum and Sawyer are ridiculously adept at
dodging fusillades of high-powered bullets, but that has become de rigueur in
flicks of this nature.
Emmerich has a long history of
thunderously overblown, audience-pleasing epics that go back to Stargate and Independence Day (the latter getting a wink-nudge shout-out here), and more recently include the less satisfying 10,000 BC and 2012. I’m happy to note that White House Down lacks the unpalatably
casual mass brutality of 2012; all the characters here matter, and the occasional
instances of collateral homicide take place logically, rather than as a
pointless excuse to ratchet up the body count.
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