There’s not a whole lot of realism to James Vanderbilt’s screenplay for “White House Down,” amid the ludicrously inept security around the president, the motor vehicle chases across the White House lawn, the flag-waving little girl who saves America and an ingenious constitutional crisis that no one’s ever thought of before, involving multiple overlapping and theoretically legitimate presidents. But yeah, that probably would provoke exactly the kind of right-wing screaming meltdowns and creepazoid paramilitary counterattack we see in the movie. Christ! First of all, no president could or would really do those things – by the time you get elected, you already understand there are some places you just don’t go. I couldn’t stop myself!)Īnyway, not only has Sawyer announced a plan to sign a peace agreement with Iran and remove all United States troops from the entire Middle East, he also intends to expose all the American arms manufacturers who’ve been double-dealing with repressive regimes all over the world. Sawyer is more like a black president who’s actually from Chicago, instead of being a prep-school kid from Honolulu. Of course, as played by Jamie Foxx, President James Sawyer isn’t exactly Obama, despite the intellectual demeanor, the sticks of Nicorette and the elegant fashion-plate first lady (Garcelle Beauvais, who should’ve been given more to do). Oh, and just a little bit of “Home Alone in the White House.”
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This ripping and ridiculous yarn from disaster-movie king Roland Emmerich (he of “Independence Day,” “2012,” etc.) is about a right-wing coup d’état staged against an African-American president who has vowed to take down the “military-industrial complex.” No, seriously! And he kind of says it like it’s a new idea! All in all, the movie is something like an MSNBC remake of “Die Hard” mixed with “Les Misérables” (minus the singing) mixed with a wishful-thinking version of Barack Obama in which he personally takes out Serbians and white supremacists with an RPG. As gristly, undigested globs of American fear, American hope and semi-justified American paranoia go, “White House Down” is both highly entertaining and perfectly timed (in a way that can only be accidental).