Rating of
2/4
"White house Down" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 01/14/16
When a right wing paramilitary group besiege and capture the White House, a lone cop is left to protect the president. White House Down seems like a very old fashioned action thriller; almost a carbon copy of the rash of Die Hard copies that plagued the nineties, including Under Siege, Executive Decision and Air Force One, it's basically "Die Hard With A POTUS". The plot gets ever more far-fetched and ridiculous as it goes (I'd love to have sat in on the meeting where they figured out how to crowbar a car chase into a film about being trapped in the White House!) and Channing Tatum's beefcake with a gun is a personality vacuum. What just about saves the film is Emmerich's trademark tongue in cheek approach that ensures it never takes itself too seriously, and the fact that instead of the usual Ay-rab terrorists, the bad guys are right wing rednecks attempting to overthrow a socialist black president which almost in a way makes it a kind of sly parody of Obama's presidency. This saves it from becoming absolute dross but as a whole, White House Down is really only watchable rubbish rather than unwatchable rubbish.
