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.
