White House Down

2 ½ pipes out of 4

Olympus Has Fallen, take 2. More takes generally create better results and that is definitely the case here for White House Down outperforming Olympus Has Fallen. Roland Emmerich takes the idea of having the White House hostilely taken over and makes it feasible. Unlike Olympus, who uses brute force to take the White House, Emmerich uses espionage and betrayal what takes down the defenses of our nation’s most defended building. From the trailer it appeared as though Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum would be cracking jokes at inappropriate times during a massive crisis but it turns out that the jokes made sense during the time and defused the tension building, allowing the audience to stay invested without tensing all the way through the film. This only works because the high tempo action and comedy are maintained all the way through the film with no lulls until the films crescendo. At first glance White House Down is just another over the top action comedy when in reality it pays homage to the classic films in the genre. Emmerich pays direct tribute to such film as The Rock and the lethal weapons series while containing almost every cliché possible from the brilliant hacker to the betrayed soldier. The cliché’s work well together but there are a few loose ends that where hastily tied up with no real thought keeping White House Down off the top shelf but it is pretty darn close.

Olympus Has Fallen

1½ pipes out of 4

Olympus has fallen and it can’t get up. Even with an all star cast of Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Gerard Butler and Ashley Judd, it just can’t seem to get off the ground. Besides the fact that the premise that the White House could ever be taken in 15 minutes is ridicules, Olympus Has Fallen appears to be a bad rip off of the original Die Hard. It is complete with all of the action movie clichés, with the classic double cross, there being only one person that can save the day and a hard nosed general who hates the protagonist for being better at life than he is. There are so many similarities it could be viewed as a Die Hard reboot to the naked eye. Another interesting fact is that while Morgan Freeman makes a descent president, he continues the trend in Hollywood if having a black man as the acting president whenever there is a horrible tragedy, remember deep impact? The 5^th Element? 2012? Aaron Eckhart plays the original president who gets taken hostage and has to show his bravado of everyone else can give up their codes to the nukes because he won’t give up his. Since he won’t give up his there is no point for others to resist, by this logic the fate of the entire world rests on one man when it could have remained on 3. Ashley Judd makes a brief appearance as the First Lady until tragedy strikes and Gerard Butler, head of secret service security detail to the president, is demoted to a desk job. Soon after, all hell breaks loose at the White House and Butler is called upon to unleash is inner BAMF. One thing that the film does have going for it is that Rick Yune does a wonderful job portraying a genius yet insane villain with realism, going so far as executing a hostage on camera after a failed attempt by the Navy Seals to retake the White House. The action is relatively nonstop which does help disguise the discrepancies making this a nice film to curl up on the couch on a Saturday night with popcorn and the $1 price of red box.