White House Down (2013)

A short entry for this one. Not a long time ago I was writing about "Olympus has Fallen" in not very encouraging terms. Let's see how the other version of "Die Hard in the White House" = "White House Down" looks like.

As I was saying last time, Roland Emmerich seems to do much better on action movies than on "epic disasters" (no pun intended). Or at least "White House Down" got lucky enough to be released exactly when you can freshly compare it with the other title. The story is relatively similar .. but not the same. The White House is taken by terrorists, following a coup organized by the chief of Secret Service, a guy at the age of retirement and extremely pissed on the president. Much more credible than a North-Korean commando ... even considering the motivation, which I'd rather not spoil, especially since it's not given immediately and it also has some extra threads meant to give a scent of political thriller. What can I say is that in the end we get again to deal with nukes, but this time in the "classic" fashion, not some weird autodestruction protocol that's against any common sense regarding a weapon design. "The Hero" (Channing Tatum) is not anymore a disgraced Rambo. Still with some background in a military his CV is apparently not good enough to get a job in the presidential guard, job that he wants to improve the relation with his own daughter (a teen apparently addicted to the U.S. history & related stuff). Since the job interview happens to be exactly in the day of the attack, the guy finds himself in the position to rescue his own child taken as hostage from a visiting tour of the place. On the way he manages to rescue also the president (Jamie Foxx), following this with a cat & mouse chase on the presidential backyard in Washington. That's another difference from "Olympus has Fallen" where the leader in his bunker where he was held hostage was busy releasing nukes access codes in exchange for the life of the state secretaries, stuff that again is handled differently here.

To be fair, the movie is not exactly top of the top in the action genre. The ending is pretty far fetched. We obviously have the propaganda pro-supplementing the defense budget (although again .. unlike the other movie the general note here is actually a pacifist one). The action threads on the political plan are a bit forced. There are plenty of cheesy scenes. Anyway ... not top quality as I said, but as an action movie is ok, waaaay better than "Olympus has Fallen" and probably at the level where the last "Die Hard" should've raised to avoid the major bashing.

Rating: 3 out of 5