WHITE HOUSE DOWN: The Best DIE HARD Movie In Twenty Years
White House Down knows the value of a good fist fight. It knows that a good fist fight needs one of two things: to take place at a height or to take place in the rain. The film’s two Channing Tatum/Jason Clarke fights hew closely to that principle; one happens atop the White House itself as attack helicopters circle menacingly and the other happens in the White House press room while the sprinkler system goes off.
If you’re anything like me that information gives you all you need to know about White House Down. This is a movie with a strong bench of actors being more than a little silly and honoring the best action tropes of all time. It’s a movie that’s fun in a way we rarely see in an era of over-the-top CGI spectacles and citywide destruction. It is, if I may say this, a restrained kind of action movie. And yes, Roland Emmerich directed it.
There’s a lot to like in White House Down. James Vanderbilt's script, while not blazingly smart, is actually structured, unlike modern blockbusters written on set. Elements introduced (sometimes clumsily) in act one make big comebacks in act three. There’s a sense of humor to the whole thing, but that sense of humor doesn’t stop the movie from getting tense and exciting. The interplay between Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx is restrained - it isn’t just a bunch of one-liners between machine gun bursts - and leaves us wanting more as opposed to leaving worn down.
Most of all White House Down embraces the Die Hard structure in a way that the Die Hard movies have not since their regrettable return this century. Tatum plays John Cale (no relation to the Velvet Underground, one assumes, although it would have been awesome if Jamie Foxx played President Louis Reed), a member of the Capitol Police force who wants to get on the president’s Secret Service detail. Cale’s not the usual cleancut Secret Service type, though - he’s divorced, he looks like he just rolled out of bed and he’s got some issues with authority. He’s John McClane, basically. He also has a daughter who is a huge politics buff, and when Cale wrangles a job interview in the White House he brings her along to try and impress her.
His timing is bad; while taking the White House tour terrorists seize the building. They’re aided by an inside man - James Woods, playing the head of the president’s Secret Service team, his closest bodyguard. The terrorists blow up the Capitol building as a diversionary tactic and then take the White House, killing everyone in their path. This isn’t a straight coup, though - they want the president alive for some nefarious reason. Tatum slips the terrorists and goes in search of his daughter, who was in the bathroom when the assault began. Before he can find her, he comes across the president in mortal danger and he steps in to save the commander in chief. Together the two must survive the terrorists, retake the White House, stop the evil plan and save Tatum’s daughter.
Tatum and Foxx make a good team, if not an all-time one. Tatum especially brings his best charisma to the role, and almost manages to claim the white wifebeater from John McClane. He’s a hero, which is a nice change of pace in a movie landscape littered with refusals of the call and reluctant good guys; John Cale sees a problem and solves it, putting his life on the line without a moment’s hesitation. His arc isn’t about learning something, it’s about everybody else learning he’s as good as he told them he was.
Foxx accepts a more action-challenged role. This isn’t Air Force One, with the president kicking much ass - President Sawyer has to put on his glasses before taking a shot at a bad guy. In a lot of ways he’s overshadowed by Tatum, but Foxx does have a nice moral authority and straddles the line between being cool and being a guy who refuses to jump across an elevator shaft.
The big surprise in White House Down is Joey King, playing Tatum’s daughter. King is the go-to girl of the moment - you’ll see her later this summer in The Conjuring, and she was China Girl in Oz the Great and Powerful - and she’s absolutely wonderful in this movie. Instead of being a tedious daughter-in-distress, King’s Emily Cale is a strong little girl who uploads video of the terrorists to YouTube and who, in the very end, truly saves the day. King has a ton of intensity and intelligence to go with her pre-tween cuteness, and you’re never sorry to see the story switch over to her.
The story switches other places a number of times in White House Down. Screenwriter James Vanderbilt understands that the adventures of Cale and the President can’t realistically sustain an entire film, so he has other characters set up outside the White House who allow us to see how the world reacts to this almost-unprecedented event. There’s a lot of lunkheaded political intrigue, and a ton of twists and reveals as to what is the true purpose of the attack, leading up to a real Scooby Doo “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling Capitol Police man!” moment. But that’s okay, and by the time we get there the movie has been so much fun you’re quite willing to forgive its silliness.
Having people outside the White House also means that Tatum and Foxx get to focus on being action guys while other characters solve the plot for us. And director Roland Emmerich has stacked his deck with strong actors - Maggie Gyllenhall, Lance Reddick and Richard Jenkins all do great work, a testament to the smarts in getting good actors to play small roles.
The villains are similarly well-cast. Jason Clarke is wonderful, as always, and you could almost imagine his mercenary stepped out of Zero Dark Thirty. James Woods is wheezily menacing, a crazy coot with some actual justification for his terrible actions. Jimmi Simpson is a delight as the theatrical hacker who is dressed exactly like a Die Hard Eurotrash villain. And the rest of the goons, while not quite characters, have defining features that make them pop rather than fade into fodder. There’s a care taken with the antagonists that elevates White House Down.
Emmerich is known for going big - hell, he dispensed with the White House in seconds in ID4 - but here he reigns in his tendencies for the best. There are explosions and helicopter gunships and the Capitol dome collapses and bulletproof limos have a ridiculous chase scene on the South Lawn, but it’s all contained and the scale feels consistently personal. In a summer where the destruction has been huge and impersonal, Emmerich makes every bit of chaos have impact. He shoots his action with clarity and crispness, and he keeps the film chugging along at a terrific clop. This is one of those movies that just keeps building in fun and excitement, and if it overstays its welcome a little bit in the last ten minutes you can let that go - everything else was so damn good.
White House Down is the new standard-bearer for what summer action fluff should be. It’s not smart but it’s not particularly stupid, either. It has strong, likable characters and memorable villains. It’s silly and never self-serious. It’s quick without being frantic, and it has a weird heart to it that’s impossible to deny. White House Down is a popcorn muncher that doesn’t insult the audience, doesn’t take the audience for granted and accepts that the audience wants something more from their summer blockbusters than incoherent destruction and standard Hero’s Journey arcs. It’s good old fashioned action fun.
