Film Review: White House Down

White House Down. Rated M (action violence and coarse language). 131 minutes. Directed by Roland Emmerich. Screenplay by James Vanderbilt.

Verdict: More than just the sets and props are reduced to rubble in this chest-thumper.

You’ve got to hand it to Emmerich (2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day). He’s the go-to guy whenever Hollywood thinks they need to blow-up The Whitehouse again for whatever reason. And obligingly, he does – not in quite the same spectacular fashion as he did in Independence Day (1996), but boom, and the most influential building in the world is reduced to smouldering rubble. Perversely, watching this film in the week we remember the attacks of September 11 in 2001, it’s as compelling as it is grotesque.

The mess of contradictions that surround Emmerich’s film-making career make him infuriating to watch. His The Day After Tomorrow (2004), which he has also wrote, was a spectacular achievement. His re-imagining of an ice-bound New York (and the rest of the planet) was brilliantly realised, and sequence after sequence remains extremely watchable. He also revealed himself to be a fine dramatist, particularly with the unforgettable sequences involving the glass-roofed shopping mall and the tanker that drifted up the middle of a New York street.

With White House Down, it’s business as usual as ex-soldier and Secret Service Agent wannabe John Cale (Channing Tatum doing a fine Bruce Willis impersonation) finds himself making the sure that President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) gets out of The Whitehouse alive after it is taken over by some guys with Iraq war-sized chips on their shoulders. Complicating matters is that Cale and his daughter Emily (an excellent Joey King) were in the middle of a tour of The Whitehouse at the precise moment it was taken over, and Emily, of course, is taken hostage.

Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man, Zodiac) throws everything at this turgid affair. His long, patriotic and uninspired screenplay is only saved by a fine comedic line shared between Tatum’s bluff and Foxx’s bluster, which both actors play like there will be no tomorrow.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.