White House Down - Movie Review

Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, James Woods, Richard Jenkins, Joey King, Nicolas Wright, Jimmi Simpson, Michael Murphy, Rachelle Lefevre, Lance Reddick, Matt Craven and Jake Weber.
Directed by Roland Emmerich.

★★½

Emmerich movies always have the tongue implanted in cheek, and this movie's no exception. Think of the big-budget disaster flicks like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow or the more action-oriented flicks like The Patriot or Independence Day.  Now comes a ridiculous buddy-action-comedy between a Secret Service wannabe and POTUS fleeing terrorists in Die Hard in the White House.

Jamie Foxx is the Obama-esque President, and I'm not saying that because he's black.  He even adopts the way Obama speaks, at least in the beginning of the movie. His character's name however is President Sawyer.  Sawyer has announced he's withdrawing all US troops from the Middle East, which makes some never-seen CEOs of defense-contractor companies upset.  Needless to say, eventually some mercenary types start blowing stuff up around the White House. I wonder who could be backing them...

Tatum's character is John Cale.  Not quite John McClane, but come on, he even winds up wearing just the wife-beater by the end of the movie.  It's never bold enough to have him declare "Yippy-ki-yay!"  That'd just be too much.

The movie's fun the whole time.  Even when it gets stupid, and it does, it never forgets it's just a moooovie.  Tons of explosions, gunfire, but with the cameras angled just right to help keep that PG-13.

Tatum and Foxx have infectious chemistry.  Joey King (Beezus & Ramona) has her own moments as Cale's daughter.  MVP is Nicolas Wright as the tour guide. It seems like a throwaway part that just keeps getting better.  Anyone left of center should love that all the bad guys' motives hit on every Evil Republican cliche. Some are in for white supremacy, some are in it for money, some are in it to create more war, etc. We just needed one terrorist to say he's pro-life.

It's not the best movie of the summer, but it's worth seeing if you take it on its own level.