White House Down
Now playing at Scotiabank
If you are looking for subtlety in cinema this summer, you might want to beg off the multiplex until September. If not, go see White House Down.
Its tailor-made for the season, when our brains are so addled by the sun and DEET products that we just want to watch some stuff blow up. (You might not even notice that you just saw this movie: it was called Olympus Has Fallen, and starred Gerard Butler in a copycat storyline.)
Enter Channing Tatum. Hes good at setting things alight, whether its the pyrotechnics in G.I. Joe or the stripper stage in Magic Mike. He can kinda act, too, which is an added bonus.
Here Tatum plays John Cale (only a few letters away from Die Hards John McClane), a veteran who somehow scores security detail with the Speaker of the House (Richard Jenkins). What John really wants, though, is a job with the secret service in the White House, guarding President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). He pulls a few strings and gets an interview with Agent Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal), head of security, who politely informs him that his past grades and past history is just too sloppy for presidential detail.
John puts on a brave face and continues the White House tour with his estranged daughter Emily (Joey King), a political junkie at the age of 11. But trouble is brewing: a cabinet minister (James Woods) starts his day by picking up his gun and taking off his obligatory American flag lapel pin, a sure sign that his patriotism is wavering.
Once the shooting starts, the body count exceeds two dozen in less than two minutes. The bad guys mean business. Theres no one left to guard the president except for ta da! John, who engages in a cat-and-mouse game with the baddies, trying to protect the president while on the hunt for Emily, who has wandered off.
Not to worry, because its sweaty and John is getting shot at, he will need to take off his suit and tie and strip down to his tank top.
Say what you will about U.S. president Obama, but one thing he has done is paved the way for the coolest presidential portrayal ever. The closest we got in the past was the Clinton-era character Dave, played by Kevin Kline. Foxx is suave, hes badass, and when things get hot he ditches his brogues for a pair of sneakers. Get your hands off my Jordans! is destined to be one of the catchphrases of the season.
Theres the requisite uptight general, the weirdo hacker sucking on lollipops, the doughy Fox News-type correspondent, who cant stop crying.
We are not that smart its summer vacation, remember? so things are spelled out very, very carefully for us. When filmmakers bring up the military industrial complex they are careful to follow it up with a quick joke, so our heads dont explode.
And you know that in a film like this, if a character references Edward Bulwer-Lyttons the pen is mightier than the sword, someones going to get it in the jugular. Stare at a pocketwatch too long and its bound to play a pivotal role in the action.
The film is directed by Roland Emmerich, the man who blew stuff up in The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and yes, Independence Day, which is referenced in this film. The flag-waving, both metaphorical and literal, in the films last scene is the cherry on a schmaltz sundae but hey, you knew what you were in for.
