![]() I laughed a lot – and I suspect Emmerich did too. James Woods chews up the West Wing scenery, Maggie Gyllenhaal takes up the slack as the secret service whiz keeping her cool on a very bad day, and Richard Jenkins manages to keep a splendidly straight face even as the flag-waving Die Hard riffs are pushed way beyond the point of parody. It starts with handguns, but soon escalates to massive rocket-launchers, exploding helicopters, marauding tanks and even nuclear warheads. While Olympus… had Gerard Butler as a bargain-basement Bruce Willis, this throws likable rent-a-lunk Channing Tatum into the seat of American power, wherein he must save the president (Jamie Foxx, having a ball) from assorted baddies and crackpots hell-bent on increasingly bonkers acts of mindless destruction. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record."That's the building they blew up in Independence Day!" Bigger, dumberer and just a whole lot more stupid fun than the boringly straight-faced Olympus Has Fallen, this bona-fide big-budget Hollywood flop at least has the good grace to laugh at itself as it rolls out the dingbat-daft action-movie cliches. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. Director Roland Emmerich, having already laid waste to the White House in Independence Day, is back for seconds in White House Down, in which D.C. GREENE: Kenneth Turan reviews movies for MORNING EDITION and also for the Los Angeles Times.Ĭopyright © 2013 NPR. If this film had a sensible bone in its body, it wouldn't be the kind of fun it turns out to be. ![]() But it is the strength of "White House Down" that the action is so continuous that it rarely leaves you the leisure for mature reflection. TURAN: Of course, all of this is wildly plausible and completely silly if you stop to think about it. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House summary of box office results, charts and release information and related links.Cale and the president even end up as a very unlikely buddy team, able to share laughs as well as armaments. TURAN: But Cale just happens to possess the kind of extraordinary skill set that comes in handy when the fate of this nation is one the line. ![]() They've infiltrated the White House and make taking over the building look easy. TURAN: But while Cale is having his job interview, we meet again the nefarious intruders so suspicious looking they practically have terrorist tattooed on their foreheads. ![]() Unfortunately, his White House interview with a Service agent played by Maggie Gyllenhaal doesn't go too well. Capitol Police, but Cale burns to be a Secret Service agent keeping watch over President James Sawyer, played by Jamie Foxx. Tatum is ideally cast as John Cale, the kind of regular guy you might not look at twice but a man with a dream. It's preposterous and diverting in equal measure - something you enjoy against your better judgment. KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: "White House Down" is the story of what happens when an armed paramilitary group takes over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We should all be grateful that Channing Tatum just happens to be around to stop them, so says critic Kenneth Turan. Seemingly modeled on Die Hard With A Vengeance, it pitches a wisecracking duoone a cop. The new movie "White House Down" is pretty much what it sounds like - a movie about terrorists trying to take down the White House. Roland Emmerich’s White House Down is an entertaining throwback to the action blockbusters of the 1990s.
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