White House Down has certainly taken a little while to reach our shores so I guess the question is has it been worth the wait and how does it compare with the grump fest that was Olympus Has Fallen?
White House Down sees the White House taken over by a mysterious militant force. Trapped in the middle of this is John Cale (Channing Tatum) and his daughter Emily (Joey King). Can John (not McClane at all) escape with his daughter and save President (not Obama) Sawyer (Jamie Foxx).
Straight up this movie delivered what I pretty much expected in abundance. Ridiculous action, ham handed acting, explosions, horribly cheesy one liners and a premise that would make even the most hack director have second thoughts. However throughout the movie I wasn't so much asking, "Why am I watching this?", instead the question was, "Why am I enjoying this so much?"
The performances are certainly nothing to write home about, but considering the characters are pretty much one note performances, the estranged dad trying to win back his daughter, the "whatever" daughter with a good heart, the detached bad guy, the psycho, the crazy nerd hacker... this movie certainly doesn't scrimp on types of characters, it's just a pity that none of them really have much room for development.
Of course, by having minimal character development there is loads of room for gun battles, explosions, convenient revealing of plot points in idle conversation, more explosions, helicopters, planes, explosions, bad one-liners about Nike's, gun battles and, oh yeah, explosions.
At the end of the day, if you are in the mood for a mindless action movie White House Down will certainly satisfy that craving. It may be run of the mill and formulaic, but it combines the formula into an exciting and pleasing presentation. It has the now compulsory plot twists which are blatantly signposted and certainly do not take you by surprise yet somehow this does not detract from the film. The action never stops which certainly gives the film the advantage of not giving you much of a chance to think about what is going on.
In a word - BOOOOOM!
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