Movie Review - White House Down

White House Down *** (PG-13) One might conclude that director Roland Emmerich never met a disaster premise he didn’t like, leading to a track record that includes Independence Day, Godzilla’s 1998 resurfacing, and The Day After Tomorrow. The guy blows stuff up real good, as shown in his second depiction of our nation’s capital being devastated by evildoers. Last time it was aliens (space, not border); this siege comes from an assortment of home-grown zealots with various political, historical and financial motives. It’s basically one of the Die Hard flicks with a patina of allusion to current events.

Jamie Foxx plays a U.S. President who announces complete withdrawal of all forces from the Middle East, hoping to generate a lasting peace in the region, once our mere presence stops causing resentments and draining our treasury. He plans to spend the savings at home, tending to our citizens’ neglected domestic needs. The military-industrial complex will obviously have none of that. The fact that this dramatic shift in foreign policy is coming from a Black POTUS provides another source of inspiration for the attackers who blow up the Capitol and lay waste to the White House in the course of their power grab. Fortunately a bodyguard who was rejected by the Secret Service (Channing Tatum) happens to be visiting when the excrement hits the ventilating device, forcing him into full-on Bruce Willis/John McClane mode, complete with imperiled daughter on the premises.

The action ranges from over-the-top to cartoonish, but Emmerich runs the show at such a frenetic pace, you won’t be distracted by noticing how absurd it’s becoming until late in the going. The adrenalin-producing elements are rife and effectively deployed. The liberal dose of comic relief along the way tends more to the traditional macho vein than political satire. No nutrients for the IQ in an Emmerich "f/xtravaganza". (6/28/13)