Die Hard In The White House 2013 Review Miniseries - White House Down (June 2013)

Written In January 2014

 Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

John Cale (Channing Tatum) is a United States Capitol Police officer assigned to Speaker of the House of Representatives Eli Raphelson (Richard Jenkins) after Cale saved Raphelson’s nephew’s life during a tour in Afghanistan. Cale is struggling to develop a better relationship with his daughter Emily (Joey King), who has a strong enthusiasm for politics. He hopes to impress her by getting a job with the Secret Service, but the interview is conducted by Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a former college acquaintance of his who believes that he is unqualified. After lying to Emily about the outcome of the interview, she and Cale join a tour of the White House. At the same time, U.S. President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) proposes a controversial peace treaty between allied countries to remove military forces from the Middle East.

Meanwhile, a man disguised as a janitor detonates a bomb at the center of the United States Capitol, causing the collapse of the building's dome. Raphelson - who was in the Capitol but is uninjured - and Finnerty are taken to a secure command center underneath the Pentagon while Vice President Alvin Hammond (Michael Murphy) is taken aboard Air Force One. The White House is put on lockdown separating Cale from Emily (who had left the tour group to use the restroom). Meanwhile, mercenaries led by Emil Stenz (Jason Clarke) start killing off most of the Secret Service and take the tour group hostage, but Cale manages to take a gun from a mercenary named Carl Killick (Kevin Rankin) and escapes to go and find his daughter. Meanwhile, retiring Head of the Presidential Detail Martin Walker (James Woods) escorts President Sawyer and his detail to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Once Sawyer gains access, Walker kills everyone else in Sawyer’s detail, revealing himself to be the leader of the attack; he wants revenge for his son who was killed during a botched black ops mission. Cale, who fails to find Emily, kills a mercenary and uses his radio to locate and rescue the President.

Walker and Stenz bring in Skip Tyler (Jimmi Simpson) to hack into the defense system, but they still require Sawyer to activate the nuclear football. Emily, while hiding, records a video of the mercenaries and uploads it to YouTube before eventually being captured by Killick. Walker demands $400 million from the Federal Reserve as ransom for the hostages. Cale and Sawyer manage to contact the Pentagon, and Finnerty tells Cale to get Sawyer out through a series of secret underground tunnels. Finnerty then uses Emily’s video to discover the mercenaries’ identities, realizing that they used to work for various government agencies and radical political groups. They are informed that Stenz, a former Special Forces operative, was disavowed and burned on mission, leading to his capture by the Taliban. They also discover that Walker has terminal cancer, suggesting his involvement to be a suicide mission and not for ransom. Cale and Sawyer find the tunnel gate rigged with an explosive and are forced to escape in apresidential limousine. After a car chase with Stenz on the White House lawn, Cale and Sawyer are flipped into the White House pool after Cale gets distracted by the sight of Killick holding Emily at gunpoint. A gunfight erupts which results in an explosion that leaves Sawyer and Cale presumed dead. Aboard Air Force One, Hammond is sworn in as President.

When Cale and Sawyer reveal they are still alive, they learn Hammond has approved an aerial incursion by Delta Force to take back the White House. Knowing the mercenaries have Javelin surface-to-air missiles, Cale tries but fails to stop the mercenaries from shooting down the helicopters. Cale gets into a fight with Stenz and ends up dropping his White House passes for himself and Emily while escaping. Having already learned of Emily from the video, Stenz, knowing that she is Cale’s daughter, takes her to Walker in the Oval Office. Meanwhile, Tyler finishes the upload to NORAD and launches a missile at Air Force One, killing everyone on board. Raphelson is then sworn in as President and, in a last ditch effort to end the crisis, orders an air strike on the White House.

Walker tells Cale over the White House intercom to surrender Sawyer or he will shoot Emily. Sawyer ultimately surrenders himself to save Emily, knowing Cale could still save them both if he was free. Holding the pair in the Oval Office, Walker reveals to Sawyer that his motive for the attack was to convey a message of American power. Because of Sawyer’s dislike of military force, as well as backing out of the mission that killed his son, Walker had grown to believe Sawyer was too weak to be President; by launching a nuclear attack on Iran, Walker had hoped to regain international respect for America and avenge his own personal loss. He asks for Sawyer to activate the nuclear football, but Sawyer refuses. When Walker threatens to shoot Emily again, the alarms and sprinklers are activated by Cale setting fire to the Lincoln Bedroom. In the chaos, Tyler tries to escape but encounters the tunnel gate bomb. When he tries to deactivate it, it detonates instead, killing him. Killick finds Cale and tries to kill him, but is ambushed by Donnie Smith, the White House tour guide (Nicolas Wright), who bludgeons Killick to death with a clock. After freeing the hostages and entrusting Donnie to get them out safely, Cale battles Stenz and ultimately kills him with a grenade belt. Using the explosion to catch him off guard, Sawyer attacks a distracted Walker, but Walker gains the upper hand and forces Sawyer to activate the football before apparently shooting him dead. Using updated launch codes from an anonymous source, Walker targets various cities in Iran, but before he can initiate the launch, Cale smashes through the wall of the Oval Office with a presidential SUV, and kills Walker with the SUV's minigun. Cale warns Emily of the air strike, and she takes a presidential flag and waves it on the front lawn, prompting the pilots to call off the attack. Meanwhile, Sawyer reveals himself to be alive since the bullet that hit him hit a pocket watch his wife (Garcelle Beauvais) had given him. Finnerty calls them to reveal that the mercenaries were not hired by Walker, and that there is another person behind the attack. Cale realizes who it is and asks Sawyer for his help in exposing the person.

Later, Finnerty arrives at the White House with Raphelson. When Cale tells them Sawyer was killed, Raphelson then orders troops to be placed back into the Middle East, which would go against Sawyer’s peace treaty. Cale then reveals Raphelson had conspired with Walker to orchestrate the attack because of Raphelson’s opposition to Sawyer’s treaty and then proves it by having Finnerty call the call-back number on Walker’s pager, which was the source of the updated launch codes. Sawyer arrives and has Raphelson taken into custody, treating his taking of the Presidency as a coup d'état. Sawyer then officially offers Cale a job in the Secret Service and takes him and Emily on an aerial tour of Washington, D.C. on his way to the hospital. Realizing an increased need for peace due to the day’s events, Israel, Russia, the European Union, Canada, China, Iran and other Middle Eastern and Asian countries agree to sign Sawyer’s peace treaty.

So the first thing I want to address, Jamie Foxx is playing Barack Obama in all but name. I mean it, he is literally an analogue to Obama!

1. Obama: closet smoker. Sawyer: keeps a crap ton of packs of nicorette gum in his night stand.
2. Obama: has a beloved wife and two daughters. Sawyer: has a beloved wife and daughter.
3. Obama: known for being witty on talk shows and other public appearances. Sawyer: consistently has some sort of wisecrack throughout the movie.

All you really need was Foxx trying to do his Obama impersonation whenever he spoke. Anywho, onto the pros and cons.

PROS:

• The effects are pretty great.
• Jamie Foxx’s president is aware that as a leader the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
• Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a good performance in this movie.
• James Woods plays a bad guy in this movie.
• There’s a child actress in the movie who gives a decent performance, I hope she does good in the future.
• Video of the terrorist is released through YouTube, which I think is a nice note of the fact that information like this is becoming increasingly easier to find out about through the internet.

CONS:

• Channing Tatum.
• Terrible villains!
• The villains are without believable motives.
• Jamie Foxx’s president is too perfect!
• The movie does a very poor job of juggling political commentary and action.
• The action is rather forgettable.
• While I do think the actress did well in the film, I don’t see the point of Channing Tatum’s Daughter’s subplot. It’s rather plot derailing.
• There’s a scene where James Woods’ wife in the film is allowed to speak with him through a radio connection, when he tells her why he is doing these terrible things, she encourages him! Telling him to make the government pay for what they did to their son. This is COMPLETELY unbelievable.
• While James Woods is somewhat interesting, his cronies are just thugs for hire who have nothing to really compel you to understand why they’re doing.
• The Speaker of The House being a villain is also really unneeded, and again, unbelievable.
• All of the nations of the world suddenly calling for World Peace after the attack on the white house is the most unbelievable thing in the movie and just plain stupid.

Now before I give my actual ranking on the film, let me talk to you for a second about… Star Trek! I know a lot of folks had issues with the latest film, Star Trek Into Darkness, but I really dug it. And one moment that I really appreciated about the movie was when Alice Eve’s Carol Marcus addresses her father, Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), while aboard the Enterprise. She tells him that while she gets the why behind him trying to militarize Starfleet and being about to attack the ship with his own (The USS Vengeance), she tells him that this is not the way and that it is not right, and notes that she knows that he won’t destroy the ship with her aboard it. Weller nonchalantly says that he won’t have to, and beams her aboard his ship. Once aboard, Carol walks strait up to the Admiral in his captain’s chair and slaps him across the face, telling him that she is ashamed to be his daughter.

Say what you want about JJ, but he is clearly smarter than Roland Emmerich. Because any person stupid enough to tell their husband to go ahead and destroys millions of lives to avenge the life of their own son should not be put on screen for any amount of time. I won’t say that moment ruined the movie for me, but it lost a lot of points for me.

BUT, speaking of Star Trek, who here is familiar with the phrase most famous with Star Trek II?

Okay, that one’s pretty awesome too, but I was referring to a different phrase. Specifically one from Spock at the end of the movie.

YES! That’s it! That’s the one!

Now let me tell you what this quote has to do with this stupid movie. There’s a scene where Jamie Foxx’s President Sawyer is being told to give the terrorists his launch code or else they will kill Channing Tatum’s daughter. Foxx looks the little girl in the eyes, she has a gun to her head and is scared beyond belief, and you know exactly why. And Foxx tells her, “If I give them this code, he’s going to kill millions of people. I can’t let that happen. Do you understand?” She nods and says that she does, clearly not wanting to die, but trying to prepare herself for it.

“The needs of the many… Outweigh the needs of the few… Or the one.” - Spock.

This scene COMPLETELY makes up for the scene I just complained about it. It demonstrates a level of maturity that is otherwise absent from this movie, that is sorely missing throughout the rest of the film.

Now please don’t misunderstand me, I do NOT advocate child murder. It’s a horrible thing that goes beyond being just plain criminal. Any person who’s murdered someone who has not even begun life deserves an ETERNITY in the fieriest depths of hell. Even if you don’t believe in things like heaven and hell, if you’re a moral person at all, you have to believe there is an equally special place for child murderers as there is for people who commit crimes like rape.

But what’s right here? Allowing for millions of people, whether newborn, college grad or looking to retire soon, to die for the sake of this one little girl living? Or letting her die, so that so many others like her can live to see old age?

But unfortunately, if I were to give this movie rating, which I will, I’d have to give a 5 out of 10.