WHITE HOUSE DOWN MOVIE

                WHITE HOUSE DOWN

OVERVIEW :

White House Down is a 2013 American action-thriller film directed by Roland Emmerich about an assault on the White House by a paramilitary group. The film's screenplay is by James Vanderbilt and stars Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx. The film was released on June 28, 2013. White House Down was released on June 28, 2013. It was originally scheduled for November 2, 2013

VIEW LITTLE SYNOPSIS :

Roland Emmerich may never win an Oscar (I'm going out on a limb here), but he gets my vote as the greatest practitioner of good bad movies working in Hollywood today.

I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment. Seriously. It takes a certain kind of genius to crank out blockbusters as spectacularly silly as "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012." And the main difference between Emmerich and fellow maestros of mayhem like Michael Bay is that he actually seems to be in on the joke. He knows his movies are preposterous nonsense, and he embraces it.I’m glad, though, that the NSA hasn’t yet spirited Emmerich off to a remote location, because I rather enjoy his movies (the more self-serious Anonymous being a rare exception). Emmerich’s vision of civilization’s collapse is so loony, the scale of the damage he imagines so vast, that his best movies (that is to say his worst) achieve a strange tone of devil-may-care merriment. In White House Down, the spectacularly disturbing image of the Capitol rotunda exploding into flame—which dominates the film’s marketing campaign—isn’t some sort of action-climax dessert; it’s an amuse-bouche of excitement that occurs about 15 minutes in. Things only escalate from there, as the battleground quickly moves from Capitol Hill to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (as impressively replicated in the production design of Kirk M. Petruccelli).

Channing Tatum plays John Cale, who (having presumably time-traveled from his days as a founding member of the Velvet Underground) is an Iraq vet serving on the security detail of the speaker of the House, Congressman Eli Raphelson (Richard Jenkins). Cale’s dream is to move up to the Secret Service—in part because his 11-year-old daughter Emily (Joey King) is a politics nerd with a crush on the sitting president. You can see why given that, as played by Jamie Foxx, President James Sawyer is basically Barack Obama (complete with a secret addiction to cigarettes and a not-so-secret obsession with Abraham Lincoln) after an extra spin through the sexifying machine. In addition to being handsome and charmingly self-effacing, Sawyer is honest, idealistic, and righteous. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” he announces in a speech on the eve of a major Middle East peace accord. It’s an adage that will come in handy later, when weapons around the Oval Office are in short supply.Cale’s interview for the Secret Service job doesn’t go so well. His interviewer, Special Agent Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal) turns out to be an old college flame, which is not only socially awkward but professionally disadvantageous—she remembers her ex’s bad study habits and poor impulse control, and suggests he content himself with a less prestigious post. But as Cale and his daughter are about to leave the White House (in an attempt to win her reluctant tween affection, he’s wangled a day pass for them both), some heavy shit starts to go down. First there’s the aforementioned explosion at the Capitol, then a full-scale armed invasion of the White House by domestic terrorists. Cale and his little girl—not to mention the president, his staff, and a roomful of nervous tourists—become the hostages of a nasty crew of heavily armed malcontents, including a resentful war vet (Jason Clarke), a sadistic white supremacist (Kevin Rankin), and a traitorous presidential staffer whose identity I won’t disclose, but whose treachery is revealed early on.

Just what this ruthless bunch is after—and why it’s so important to them, in all the surrounding mayhem, to capture the president alive—won’t make sense until the last few minutes (and, unless you’re on mescaline, probably not even then). All Cale knows is that he must find and protect his daughter, who’s gotten separated from him in the chaos. But in his search for Emily, Cale happens upon President Sawyer being held at gunpoint—and suddenly, that Secret Service position he wanted is all his, along with the unenviable responsibility of saving the world from all-out war. You see, the bad guys have also brought along a computer hacker (Jimmi Simpson)—one of the evil kind who, in an apparent nod to Die Hard, enjoys blasting Beethoven symphonies as he cracks the NORAD missile launch codes, one by one.

Even as the story accrues preposterousness, the action moves along crisply, and Tatum and Foxx hit a nice buddy-movie vibe, especially in the scenes where the bookish, retiring president (again, shades of Obama) learns to enjoy the pleasures of putting on a pair of Jordans and firing a rocket launcher out the window of a limousine. In this season of solemnly manly blockbusters, I appreciated the boyish energy of White House Down, a movie that, for all its flamboyant destructiveness, has a playful innocence at its core. In essence, it’s 137 minutes of action figures being bashed together, and even if that’s about 20 minutes too long, there are plenty of laughs and thrills all through—many of them at the expense of plausibility, which, as the film’s last act makes clear, might be the one thing Emmerich enjoys destroying more than Air Force One.

Cast:

Channing Tatum as John Cale, a U.S. Capitol Police officer

Jamie Foxx as James Sawyer, the President of United States

Maggie Gyllenhaal as Carol Finnerty, a Secret Service agent

Jason Clarke as Emil Stenz, the leader of the mercenaries that invade the White House

Richard Jenkins as Eli Raphelson, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

Joey King as Emily Cale, the daughter of John Cale

James Woods as Martin Walker, the Head of the Presidential Detail

Nicolas Wright as Donnie, the White House Tour Guide

Jimmi Simpson as Skip Tyler, a computer hacker

Michael Murphy as Alvin Hammond, the Vice President of the United States

Rachelle Lefevre as Melanie, the ex-wife of John Cale

Lance Reddick as General Caulfield

Matt Craven as Kellerman, a Secret Service agent

Jake Weber as Ted Hope, a Secret Service agent

Peter Jacobs on as Wallace

Barbara Williams as Muriel Walker, Martin Walker's wife who, with him, is still grieving over the loss of their son

Kevin Rankin as Killick

Anthony Lemke as Hutton

Vincent Leclerc as Todd

Garcelle Beauvais as Alison Sawyer, the First Lady of the United States

Watch trailer over here