(Movie Review) White House Down (2013)

White House Down should stay down and never get back up

Channing Tatum films are like discount canned foods at the supermarket that are missing the labels. Sometimes you get a nice surprise but most of the time it’s something that you really don’t care for. How this guy has made a name for himself in Hollywood is beyond amazing to me. He really does suck in pretty much everything that he is in. But he is a particular kind of “suck”. His level of “suck” brings out the “suck” in everyone else that is in the movie too. Case in point…this movie. A talented group of actors that have never been worse at their jobs than they are in this movie. 

Storyline: After an interview at the White House to become part of the Secret Service, John Cale (Tatum) and his daughter join a tour group. While on their tour they are separated and soon an attack is made on the White House. While hordes of mercenaries flood the building, killing everything that moves, Cale is tasked with trying to find and save his daughter while also protecting the President (Foxx). 

If you are thinking that you have somehow stumbled into a time machine that dropped you off in May 2013, you are mistaken. That movie was called Olympus Has Fallen and was undoubtedly better than this film. However, while watching it you may feel more like you have been transported back to 1988. A dreamy tank-top clad hero must scurry though the maze of a large building and take out the bad guys while also trying to protect a loved one. But again, you would be mistaken. That movie is Die Hard. 

Joking aside, I have never felt like a movie was more of a blatant rip off of another movie than I did while watching this movie rip off Die Hard. Sure, the location is different and the stakes make be considered higher, but John Cale wants to be John McClane so bad it’s pathetic. One line, and the exact line escapes me now, I believe is word for word copied from Die Hard. The only difference is that Bruce Willis was, and always will be, more talented and likeable than Channing Tatum. 

Worth the admission? Never! If this was the real world I would have been rooting for the terrorists! Not only is Tatum worthless in this movie, but Jamie Foxx makes the worst on screen President I have ever seen. He is given some cringe worthy dialog. It’s a shame too. This movie actually has some really good actors in it, but none of them live up to their potential. There is a scene where Foxx, Tatum, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Joey King ( John Cale’s daughter) is sitting in a helicopter and it is the most awkwardly bad acting I can remember seeing lately. Between that and the HORRIBLE special effects, I have to recommend that you skip this movie.