Sadly, Emmerich bottles out of any lasting character interplay in favour of one big bang after another, trashing choppers, presidential aircraft and oval-shaped offices with a casual abandon only a $150m budget can afford. (Their bazooka-blasting spin around the grass in Sawyer’s ‘Beast’ limousine is a second act standout.) With his stumblebum demeanour and “why me?” testiness, Tatum makes a more likeable lead than OHF ’s Gerard Butler and fosters a winning rapport with Foxx as they sneak about trying not to get blown up and shot. OK, so would-be secret service agent Channing Tatum doesn’t so much ape John McClane as thieve his identity, being a) prone to vests, b) familiar with elevator shafts and c) related to one of the hostages.īut then WHD seems practically hell bent on being the Die Hard sequel A Good Day To Die Hard wasn’t, right down to having Beethoven on its soundtrack, a glasses-sporting techno-geek (Jimmi Simpson) and a bad guy (Jason Clarke) with a beef against Channing’s blue-collar fly in the ointment. It also has a sense of humour to offset its scenes of wanton destruction, not to mention a POTUS in Jamie Foxx’s James Sawyer you could conceivably see yourself voting for. Which is a shame really, as Emmerich’s effort is markedly more personable than Antoine Fuqua’s and has a better cast to boot. The picture’s supposed liberal bias has been held responsible by right-wing blowhards for it tanking Stateside, although plain old audience apathy is a more plausible explanation. Less outrageously violent than Olympus Has Fallen, White House Down also dials down the hysterical xenophobia by having chez Prez violated by home-grown neo-Con paramilitaries rather than evil foreigners. How can the same shit happen to the same house twice? That’s the question that hovers over Roland Emmerich’s newest like Marine One on the White House lawn, given it’s the second actioner this year to have a hostile takeover of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue challenged by a heroic rogue element.

White house down olympus has fallen