Please Give Some More Love To The Thrilling And Endearing White House Down

Back in 2013, Roland Emmerich returned to the White House, the location that served him quite well when he blew it to pieces in the first Independence Day movie. But just like returning to the world of Independence Day itself didn't yield any box office results comparable to that 1996 movie, Emmerich's 2013 return to the White House was similarly DOA financially. That's a shame because White House Down might just be the best movie Roland Emmerich's done, one that leans heavily on charismatic actors, over-the-top characters and constantly escalating in absurdity action to deliver the right kind of bombastic blockbuster filmmaking.


Like many of Emmerich's movies, this one's all about a single dad trying to reconnect his child (is he ever gonna turn this on its head and make one of these disaster movies about a single mom?) in the midst of a global catastrophe. In this case, it's John Cale (Channing Tatum) who is trying his best to be on good terms with his daughter Emily (Joey King), a politics obsessed video blogger whose talent for flag-twirling ends up saving America. John has managed to make Emily's whole year by scoring her a spot on a tour of the White House that they go on after John's job interview for a position on the President's secret service which, unfortunately, does not go well.

Just as John and Emily begin their tour, bombs and all sorts of mayhem begin to go off that lead to the White House being overtaken by Head of the Secret Service Martin Walker (James Woods), Emil Stenz (Jason Clarke) and their assorted henchman. Emily and John get separated in the chaos but John does run into a figure Walker and his cohorts are searching for: a man by the name of James William Sawyer, A.K.A. The President of the United States. Now, Sawyer and Cale are gonna have to work together to stop Walker and Stenz's evil plans, save Emily and also save AMERICA!!! *patriotic tune starts playing*

In his video essay on Roland Emmerich's 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, Bob Chipman notes how a heavy emphasis on smaller-scale details like characterization managed to give real heft to that disaster movie and I think going for an even more intimate nature for White House Down serves Roland Emmerich and co. incredibly well here. Contrary to the more scattered nature of the overstuffed but watchable 2012 or something like Independence Day: Resurgence with a massive cast of forgettable characters scattered across the globe, White House Down primarily takes place in one location (The White House) and is all about the struggles of one man.

That doesn't mean James Vanderbilt's screenplay doesn't falter on a story level of course, far from it. The second act gets too repetitive with too many stop/start moments where it looks like our heroes are about to escape before the baddies prove that to be very much not the case while brief recurring sequences set at The Pentagon have a tendency to eschew the over-the-top nature of the rest of the movie to their detriment. But man oh man, White House Down really does excel at just going to town on being as delightfully goofy as possible. Aside from Maggie Gyllenhaal's character, everyone in here is some kind of stylized personality played by actors who are having a blast playing such creations.

Such heightened individuals inhabit a story all too happy to keep tossing out as many absurd situations as possible for them to survive, with the majority of them being framed in a refreshingly cohesive and visually memorable way (I'd actually say this is by far the best-shot Roland Emmerich movie, which only makes the goofier plot details such cinematography is depicting all the more entertaining) that likely wouldn't have occurred under the direction of less talented action movie directors, say, Brett Ratner or Oliver Megaton. Someone like those two likely would have gone for a more grim aesthetic in contrast to the endearingly sincere charms of White House Down.

For those looking for realism or jaded "too-cool-for-school" attitudes, look elsewhere. John Cale and James William Sawyer are just nice guys looking to do the right thing and I love that the plot has these two meet up and work together without forced plot contrivances cropping up to worm some extraneous conflict into their dynamic. Instead, they just get into all sorts of delightful action mayhem accompanied by a winning chemistry between Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, the latter of whom is particularly impressive as one of my favorite recent movie Presidents. In White House Down, director Roland Emmerich scores his best blockbuster ever by embracing the over-the-top and the sincere, creating a movie that totally deserves more love in the process. #ScrewYouOlympusHasFallen