However you feel about the Oval Office, this country, or Emmerich’s compulsive
need to re-enact the annihilation of everything that America holds dear, his
latest is as ripping and riveting as it is ridiculous. A welcome throw-back to
an earlier and more generous tradition of summer blockbusters that didn’t
involve superpowers or science fiction, White
House Down is cheerfully preposterous, marked with a simplicity, wit, and playful
innocence so often missing from current action films.
Even rarer perhaps, it’s a slick, high-concept takeover movie with an
inkling of shrewd political awareness. This time around there are no aliens,
natural disasters, or even non-domestic terrorists—although the media in the
film unanimously describe the White House seizure as an al-Qaida attack. The viciously
violent coup is an inside job; in a way that would make Kubrick proud, the
enemy comes from within. The villains are all disgruntled Americans with
ideological axes to grind, right wing sociopaths, white supremacists, malcontent
war vets and assorted bureaucrats with nasty agendas. Mixing fear, hope, and
paranoia, White House Down is a dire
political fable told with a pearly-white smile as tongue-in-cheek pastiche. It’s
a sturdy, cheerfully preposterous, old-fashioned bit of escapism.
