Tag Archives: White House

White House Down Review

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It’s time to review a recent White House film and I’m not talking about Olympus Has Fallen this time! White House Down has more of a summer blockbuster feel while Olympus tried to take itself more seriously. I definitely preferred this one, but I’ll compare them both in a little bit. This film still had quite a few problems and suffered from the usual terrorists vs America issues, but was decently fun for the most part.

John has always wanted to be a part of the secret services and he’s about to get his chance! He brings his daughter along for the interview and things are going well. The problem is that…he failed the interview. Ah well, he tried. As John is about to leave, the White House is attacked and a traitor among them destroys all of the guards. A handful of other terrorists appear and take out the 50+ guards in the White House. John manages to escape along with the President, but how long can they hold out? Can these villains be stopped or will the heroes have to call for some backup?

Well, the plot’s fairly basic and these films have a bit of a formula to them so you know what to expect. Most of the usual events occur, but the film does try to shake things up a little by having the President get more of a role in the adventure like in Air Force One. The film is a little on the long side, but I wouldn’t say that it drags on as you’ll stay interested during the viewing for the most part.

All right, let’s quickly get the comparisons out of the way between this and Olympus. As I mentioned earlier, Olympus is supposed to be really serious business. The terrorists just want to watch the world burn and it can be pretty gritty as the lead knifed and gunned everyone down. The villains also intimidate and shoot the hostages for a little while which made for overdramatized scenes that were painfully long. The President got a scene where he was boxing in that film, but then didn’t get to throw a punch. This film is the opposite in many ways as it’s more light. There are several scenes for comic relief and the President gets a decent role. The best part is that we don’t have to waste time watching the terrorists mess with the hostages for the most part. It happens a bit of course, but it’s much better. This film was simply better for me on just about every level. The only area where the other film won was probably with the main character. He was a little more intense than John, but I liked both leads.

Back to the film. One of the good things about it was the soundtrack. We got several solid tunes to listen too during the attacks. They were certainly fast paced and helped to make the scenes a little more epic. A little on the generic side…sure, but they still did the job. That’s the important thing. I’d also say that the writing was much better than expected as there was virtually no language when compared to the standard, but this was a TV airing so make of that what you will. It’s possible that it was just edited out.

As I mentioned earlier, John’s a good lead. He wants to be a good father and he’s been working to make himself into a good person who can be dependable for his daughter. He certainly proved his stuff in this film and you can easily root for the guy. The President is also a solid character and I’m glad that he’s always ready for a fight. He gets quite a few big moments and even shoots a rocket at one point. That’s definitely not your average President material! There aren’t any other real notable characters as you have the garden variety terrorists at the ready and the supporting characters. I liked the general of the National Defense military group as he always kept a calm head about everything and I also liked the accent.

Now, let’s get into the main issue that makes the film a little dicey. The whole premise and plot only works on the assumption that the government security staff is inept and that America’s aim for each soldier is about as good as a storm trooper. As I stated earlier, the terrorists essentially entered with 20-1 odds or maybe even worse ones than that and not a single one of them was taken down during the attack. They seriously mowed everyone down without effort and it was embarassing to watch. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the hacker just had to type in 9 digits to immediately override the security of the White House and own everyone with it. He was very adept with the tech and suddenly knew how to operate everything.

There is a lot of plot hax in this film and it never really stops. Even near the end when the President rushes an old guy, I had to wince. The old man is able to overpower him and with a single punch, the President is out of commission for about 10 minutes. A single punch…just let that sink in a little. There’s no way that someone would lose that quickly when the stakes are so high. We do have the whole concept of adrenaline after all. I could list dozens and dozens of other such reasons, but let’s just talk about the big ones. There’s the fact that there is apparently no backup near the White House for some reason and none of the planes get anywhere near there until late into the film. That’s certainly…not very well thought out of our government eh? It’s also sad to see so many random civilians huddled around the White House as it makes things very tough for the army to do their job.

Our tanks were also not very impressive as a single rocket took one down since the tank naturally missed its target with the first shot and decided not to fire any more of them after that. America just did not look good and that’s unfortunately how it has to be if this plot is ever going to look impressive to the masses. It’s also unfortunate that we even have White House tours in real life, but that’s another matter entirely. The White House is mostly for show after all and especially nowadays as the President is always around on peace negotiations and other such things. Still, the concept of it just doesn’t work for me.

Beyond that…and that’s a big beyond, this was a good film. The plot was interesting as the President wanted to unveil a controversial peace treaty that would take all troops from the Middle East. That definitely sounds risky and I’m not sure if it’s a good move, but let’s save the politics chatter for a political site. The film’s attempts to keep things light with the comic relief were decent for the most part. I didn’t mind the antique guy who kept going on about the priceless artifacts. Him throwing one away at the end was a little much, but at least he was brave enough to stand up to the villains. I didn’t like John’s daughter though as she was overly rude to him the whole time and acted like the kid from Jurassic World. We’re definitely not getting good examples of kids in current films. Just look at Pixels and how the main characters were petty thieves in their younger days. Not cool.

Overall, White House Down fulfills its duty as an action blockbuster where the President gets to fight back. There is a lot of plot hax scattered throughout the film and America looks decently bad as expected. Luckily, it’s not to the extent of Olympus Has Fallen and this film was just more fun. It wouldn’t be my first pick, but I would recommend it to viewers. My advice is to just watch it as another action film and ignore the fact that the White House is being invaded. Imagine that it is just a fancy office building and everything will start to make a little more sense. I mean, the US not having any backups whatsoever to our missilles and nukes..? Please! Still, maybe it’s a good thing for foreign countries to believe this so in that sense….right on!

Overall 6/10

Olympus Has Fallen Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version. All thoughts below should be addressed as such and a review of the unedited version would likely be a lot harsher.

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Time to look at a film which is in a tricky genre. I’ve seen a film or two like this before where it’s essentially about terrorists and what would happen when they take an area over. It’s not a genre that I’m crazy about because it usually revolves around all of the good guys looking like rank amateurs while the terrorists can suddenly shoot as well as Ann Oakley. Unfortunately, America looks even worse than I had feared and it does certainly hurt this film. The movie had potential, but you simply do not mess with the USA!

It’s an average day in the White House when terrorists storm the lawn. They had a guy on the inside who handled all of the “professional” agents around the President. Meanwhile, America must have been sleeping on the job because we only have 2 planes near the White House and they were both wrecked by the villain’s ship. One plane took down 2 and the terrorist plane was really large and clunky. America also had the better position since we were flanking both sides, but decided not to do anything. We didn’t have much protection or backup nearby either so the White House fell in 13 minutes. It’s up to one ex secret service member to take back the White House!

If you’ve seen one Terrorist film, then you’ve seen them all. By that, I mean that you can easily predict exactly what is about to happen before it ever occurs. The villain starts to kill off everyone one by one and they are forced to think about complying with the terrorist demands. Scratch that, they do comply with the demands and America looks really bad the entire time. Whyyyyyyyyyyy? I like to think that it’s just because the other countries want to see America looking weak as an ego boost. In the real world, we typically end wars as soon as they begin so this is their way to laugh it up a little. How these movies make it into theaters when they are essentially anti war propaganda against the US is beyond me.

Let’s quickly look at why America looked so bad. For starters, let’s go back to the plane scene. The heroes keep telling the mysterious plane to turn back or they will fire. They wait until the other plane is essentially within firing range and the terrorists quickly start shooting. The planes are so shocked that they go down almost instantly. It’s one of those facepalm moments. Another wince worthy scene is when random joes throw smoke bombs onto the lawn and quickly storm it. The pros can’t hit them so they are quickly overwhelmed and it’ll make you want to turn the film off for a few minutes to go make dinner or take a walk to forget about how sad that was.

Finally, The President decides to invite the Korean ambassador into the safe room during the terrorist attack. It’s really fishy that the attack happened during the visit right? Why on Earth would the President do this? Being nice is one thing, but his agents would never allow that to happen. It’s extremely plot convenient though and all of the President’s right hand men and women are there with him so now the villains can get everyone all at once. What a plan!

Oh boy, that was enough to drive me out of the film. It’s also just not fun to see the terrorists having their way with the heroes the whole time. Why give them ideas in the real world? These plans would certainly not work, but just making them look smart and tough isn’t a good thing. Making them look unsure of what to do and constantly on the defensive would have been more satisfying.

Even ignoring how America looked, the film is fairly generic. It plays out exactly how you would expect. The terrorists start killing the hostages one by one until the hero can get there and he manages to save a few of them before saving the President. Scratch that, just about all of them ended up getting blown up in one of the big twists so the body count is quite high. The main character ends up destroying the villains on his one man killing spree as he proves that he is stronger than the rest of the White House staff put together.

On the bright side, Mike Banning is a good character and easily the best part of the film. He had to make a tough decision at the beginning of the film, but he didn’t freeze up and you can’t fault him for what he did. He did what he could and would have saved everyone if he had the time. Once the White House was in trouble, he selflessly jumped into the White House to take out all of the terrorists. He really knows his way around the place to the point where I’d say that you have to suspend some disbelief, but he gets the job done. Mike Banning essentially symbolizes the ultimate American who is always ready to fight and won’t back down at any point.

Mike Banning doesn’t have much of a personality, but being an American basically is his personality. If the other guards had done as well as him, the film would have been finished a lot sooner. Even watching the pilots just stare at the giant cannon on the White House as it shot them down was just terrible. None of the other characters have much of a role except to panic or be destroyed. The film did give us a red herring as the President is shown to be practicing his boxing skills, but we never get to see him fight in the actual film. I would say that it was clever except that it’s just another way to make America look bad so I’m going to pass on that.

This film is fairly intense and violent, but you likely knew that going in. That being said, it’s not as intense as other films in this kind of genre and mostly you just need to remember that the characters are living out a Call of Duty game. It’s just like one of those titles as there are many headshots from both sides as well as the unassuming knife jabs. If you don’t like violence then you should probably stay away and the main character does have to resort intimidation, but I never said that he was a hero right? It’s a war and he goes all out on the opponents. It would be hard not to destroy everyone in this situation, but that’s the difference between a human fighting to save lives and a super hero. They go through the tough situations while still coming out scott clean because it’s what they do.

On the bright side, the pacing for the film is good. Something is always happening so there’s never a dull moment. Mike essentially starts his journey from the entrance of the White House all the way to the end through the movie. I forgot exactly how long it is, but you won’t really worry about the duration while you’re watching. The writing was also fairly decent although the traitor’s dialogue was not handled well and I didn’t buy his last second change of heart either. The whole scene just didn’t make any real sense.

Overall, This film is similar to Red Dawn in the sense that America looks bad and I’d say that it’s even worse because terrorists are behind the attack as opposed to another country. It does make a difference because the terrorists are simply given too much credit. It’s nice to see us mount a comeback at the end, but it doesn’t change the fact that they essentially destroyed all of our current government members during the process. There’s also a sequel on the way, which is likely going to make America look terrible once again. Less so since it isn’t on American soil, but shouldn’t someone find it a little strange that everyone will be in one place? There’s a reason why we have internet and such nowadays, it’s so all of the figure heads won’t have to meet up in one place. It’s not a parody like Sharknado so I guess we’ll just have to see how it ends up. I’m assuming that White House Down will be better as I thought that the trailer was good, but to an extent, I’m sure that it’ll be dicey. If you want to see a gritty action film where the main character goes around shooting everyone, I’d recommend Red. It would be more up your alley and it can basically match this film’s action scenes and holds up better in the other areas. Unless you’re waiting for the Call of Duty movie and want to see this one adapt the games (Because it is practically an adaption) this film just loses out to its rivals.

Overall 3/10