White House Down | 2013 | Roland Emmerich | Columbia Pictures | June 28th, 2013
Big budget. Cheap thrills. Roland Emmerich has delivered his latest catastrophe-based blockbuster, alongside such films as Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), and 2012 (2009). While these flicks have underwhelmed critics, they have been financially rewarding, grossing a career $3 billion plus. White House Down doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The film presents a rather clichéd structure, hinging on special effects and it’s “all star” cast. While screen time is fairly even in distribution, Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx emerge as the leads, an actually fair pairing amongst an overly-long list of actors. ‘Officer John Cale’ and ‘President James Sawyer’, respectively, become a seemingly fateful team during the assault on the United States’ capital. I actually felt that both actors were underutilized, bound by predictable dialog. Cale represents a horribly overplayed trope in cinema: The handsome, indestructible, thirty-something white male with an estranged family and something to prove. The insurgent terrorists seem to have almost perfect aim, until they start aiming at our protagonist. Sawyer plays the role of the man comically excelling at activities outside his job description. A US president shooting a rocket launcher? Hilarious. While both actors have chemistry together, the script becomes laughable at intended “dramatic” moments.
The supporting characters sprawl over the board, including James Woods in a predictably antagonistic role, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Jason Clarke. The young Joey King portrays Cale’s daughter, and does so convincingly. (I predict we’re going to see more of her in the future.) With so much happening in parallel, the film would require a master juggler the likes of Christopher Nolan to handle it. Emmerich drops the balls, and some of them roll into the dead zone underneath his (probably expensive) couch. The characters he intends the audience to care about are bland and two-dimensional. I found myself wondering more about the group of supporting terrorists, which included Jimmi Simpson giving a rather enjoyable performance as an eccentric hacker. While the film only explains their backgrounds in brief, it’s actually more interesting than the main plot. How deep were their motives? How did they get to this point?
White House Down comes with your standard CGI-laden action moments, all of which have seemingly ridiculous implementation. I have a keen eye for computer-generated imagery, and the film uses it far too obviously. Even the explosions have a cheap, uncanny-valley-ish feel to them. The traditional action scenes are actually few and far between, oddly distributed, and always predictable. All of the usual detractors are present: unlimited ammo, embarrassingly simplified technology, and characters arguing over bureaucratic jurisdiction. Anyone who believes you can hack NORAD with a USB thumbstick or access and “delete” a government profile in two keystrokes are probably the target audience for this movie. That leads to this film’s main flaw: attempting to take itself too seriously.
While Emmerich’s directorial style has remained consistent over the years, his earlier films like Independence Day weren’t intended to make a political statement. We all remember the iconic scene of the White House being blown to pieces by the alien invaders, (that scene is, in fact, directly referenced in this film), but it was just for entertainment value. Seemingly after the millennium, there is a stark shift in tone and subject matter. The Day After Tomorrow got criticism from conservatives for being an exaggeration/editorialization of climate change, which was a hot button topic at the time. 2012 got badgered for being anti-capitalist and promoting class warfare.
In White House Down, the enemy is no longer imaginary. They are our fellow Americans, our elected officials, parents-turned-domestic terrorists. More specifically, officials from one specific side of the aisle, and you can take a guess which. This comes at an almost uncannily opportune time, as the NSA scandal is breaking and as the public’s trust in the government reaches an all time low. Even though specific political parties are not mentioned, the film is undoubtably a direct jab at the conservative movement. It really tries to handle the broader moral disparity of pacifism versus militarism…and ultimately fails to make a convincing argument in either direction. It’s shallow, appealing to the quick-trigger Call of Duty demographic of today.
These sentiments culminate to the final scene, which is so incredibly barftastic that I physically cringed. It’s like every other feel-good ending, but filled with symbolism that doesn’t work. It leaves an empty feeling instead of a relieved one, attempting to declare world peace and that all the problems have been solved. But what is going to happen the day after tomorrow? Will our text messages be intercepted? Will our taxes be raised? What happens when Washington gets back to their old antics? How many US cities must be destroyed by aliens, fault lines, mutant iguanas, and terrorists before we realize we need to make a change?
White House Down doesn’t inspire you to make that change; it just makes you wonder why you spent $13 on a theater ticket when you could have sat at home and watched the news.
Rating: 4.5/10
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