The last time gun-toting terrorists tried to take over the White House on the cinema screen, they had ex-Secret Service agent and John McClane wannabe Gerard Butler to tussle with in April actioner “Olympus Has Fallen” — the film everyone rightly dubbed “Die Hard in the White House.” Now, in cinematic doppelgänger “White House Down,” they’re pitted against Channing Tatum, who dares comparison with Bruce Willis’ wise-cracking Jersey cowboy even further by sporting McClane’s iconic manky wife-beater as he guns down the terrorist scumbags one by one.
Directed by disaster movie maestro Roland Emmerich, whose previous trip to 1600 Penn in the cheese-tastic “Independence Day” proved memorably explosive, it stars Tatum as John Cale, bodyguard to Speaker of the House Eli Raphelson (Richard Jenkins) and aspiring Secret Service man. While John takes a tour of the White House with his brainbox daughter Emily (Joey King, adorable), the building is stormed by a team of mercenaries led by former Special Forces operative Emil Stenz (Jason Clarke) as they act out a plan masterminded by treacherous Head of the Presidential Detail Martin Walker (James Woods). With the White House under siege and his daughter among the hostages, it’s up to John to single-handedly stop the bastards before they gain access to nuclear launch codes — albeit with a little help from Jamie Foxx’s bazooka-blasting President of the United States.
Like “Olympus Has Fallen,” “White House Down” can pride itself as a better “Die Hard” movie than the actual “Die Hard” movie released this year: while ol’ Brucie wreaks noisy, head-thumping havoc in the streets of Moscow, Butler and Tatum have much more fun battling badguys in the tight confines of the Presidential Palace. Of the two, “White House Down” is for me the better film: Tatum, to whom I’ve very much warmed after “Magic Mike” and “21 Jump Street,” continues to grow in star charisma, and the film has a likeable, goofy sense of humour as opposed to “Olympus Has Fallen”’s grim self-seriousness.
The plot is, of course, utterly ludicrous, reaching the pinnacle of lunacy when Foxx’s supposedly noble Leader of the Free World hangs out the side of a speeding Presidential limo while firing a rocket launcher on the White House front lawn. But the film works on the level of a dumb but breezily entertaining big-budget B-movie which shamelessly mimics “Die Hard”’s rock-solid premise — wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time — and carries it out better than bored Willis himself can these days. It’s nice to have a John McClane in 2013 who looks like he actually gives a damn.
Rating: 6/10
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