Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Joey King, James Woods
The Indian Express rating: **1/2
Roland Emmerich is back again at what he does best: blowing things up spectacularly and relentlessly. We are in the safest house in the world, shrieks a guy. Uh huh. Not. White House, the seat of the President of the United States of America, is under a terrorist attack. Masked gunmen carrying rocket launchers are rampaging though the grand interiors, with the Prez (Foxx) hiding out with a wannabe secret service agent (Tatum) in one corner, and his daughter (King) being held hostage in another.
For over two hours, we career up and down the White House crevices as Channing Tatum reprises the Die Hard Bruce Willis, single-handedly fighting off the bad guys and staving off World War 3 in a blood-stained singlet, and a singularly set expression. The plot is a marvellous series of coincidences, which would befit a Hindi movie. Cale just happens to be at the White House to interview for a Secret Service post. His sulking little girl is along because he wants to get back into her good books. His tough interviewer (Gyllenhaal) used to know him in college. And of course the attack happens when Cale and kid are still in the building: he has brawn and she has brains, and of course it is a winning combination.
White House Down isn't as bad as I thought it would be, given Emmerich's previous outings, a mix of noisy creature features or disaster flicks (Independence Day, 2012, The Patriot). It has some resonances: Foxx as the Black President who declares, 'I just want to make a difference' could well be an echo of the Obama man. President Sawyer wants to yank American troops from the Middle East. The arms cartels and their moles in the defence machinery in high places in the US administration are mighty cheesed off: what, no more kickbacks? Out comes the resentful father (Woods) who lost his son in Afghanistan, and the guy who gets the biggest cut on arms deals, and the sneering fellows with enough arsenal to bring the White House Down.
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