White House Down

Redrum...REDRUM!

Grade: C +

Director: Roland Emmerich

Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Woods, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, and Joey King

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 11 min.

The rank similarities between White House Down and the Olympus Has Fallen, just released three months ago to tepid reaction, are obvious and regrettable. Both involve terrorist assaults on the presidential residence, kidnapping the Commander in Chief, a turncoat Secret Service agent, attempts to co-opt the nuclear launch codes, and so on.

But White House Down (and Olympus, for that matter) is more like White House Die Hard in more ways than I reasonably have space to delineate. And, that action apogee is only the most overt blueprint for a cheeky thriller that threatens to actual entertain before overstaying its welcome. Along with John McTiernan, director Roland Emmerich also apes Wolfgang Petersen (Air Force One), Michael Bay (The Rock) and Season 7 of 24, not to mention a not-so-casual mention of Emmerich’s own Independence Day—actually, this is now the fourth film in which the German-born director has wrecked the White House. Discuss...

This time around, Capitol cop John Cale (Channing Tatum) is a decorated war hero with a messy personal life hoping to land a job on the President’s Secret Service detail, headed by the retiring Martin Walker (James Woods, his casting alone an obvious bit of foreshadowing). After an unsuccessful interview with old flame (or something) Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Cale his precocious daughter Emily (Joey King) get caught mid-tour in an armed takeover of the White House by a band of paramilitary mercenaries aimed at kidnapping President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). Of course, it falls to Cale to save the president...the country...the world!

After touring the White House last year, I actually found myself marveling at the meticulous set design. But, it’s the affable byplay between Tatum and Foxx carries the film, which works best when it’s not taking itself too seriously—a car chase around the White House lawn involving the presidential limo is the over-the-top highpoint. Sawyer chomping nervously on some Nicorette gum is a not-so-subtle allusion to President Obama’s cigarette habit. Still, it’s a bit uneasy when the notion of character development is an African-American president gravitating to high-end sneakers, an automatic rifle and a Cadi when things get real—”Get your hands off my Jordans!”, Sawyer yelps at a tenacious terrorist.

Ultimately, one (or a half-dozen) too many implausible and hackneyed twists eventually bring the story an inevitable, wearisome end. The 137-minute running time is at least a half-hour too long, stacking on plot turns that aren’t logical or necessary. Among the bloat are a bevy of supporting characters that do little besides stand around looking inert or saying inept things. And once the gleeful goofiness dissipates, that more than anything brings White House Down down.

Zero Dark Thirty

This is going to make a great video game someday.

Grade: A - 
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, Kyle Chandler, Harold Perrineau, Joel Edgerton, Mark Strong, Chris Pratt and James Gandolfini
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hr. 37 min.


Zero Dark Thirty, about the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, is a cinematic Rorschach test that any given viewer is bound to come away from with their own interpretation. Some will see the amoral exploitation of the torture inflicted by the CIA upon dark-skinned detainees inside concrete bunkers at clandestine black sites. Others may see a chronicle of the tenacious, even courageous personnel who brought justice upon the world's most wanted terrorist, Some will see a paean to feminism, while others will decry a movie—named for half past the witching hour—whose notion of strong, successful women are those most adaptable to man’s genetic bloodlust.

Controversy has swirled around Zero Dark Thirty, from the level of access to sensitive intelligence allegedly given to director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal (allegations that both deny) to its depiction of torture (and its investigative value). There are brutal depictions of sleep deprivation by means of loud music, chaining a detainee in stress positions so long that he soils himself, and stuffing a prisoner into a small wooden box.

But the fact is, torture was deployed repeatedly, and depicting its graphic nature is not only essential to an accurate telling of this history but is itself a form of condemnation for right-thinking viewers. The screenplay hints that vital evidence was occasionally obtained from the Bush-era torture program while recognizing the wholesale unreliability of intelligence extracted solely by such duress. Indeed, the film posits that it wasn't until the torture program was shelved and the intelligence community forced to shift focus and resources toward old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground detective work that they finally achieved success.

As a CIA operative newly deployed to one black site, Maya (Jessica Chastain) recoils at the sight of waterboarding during the film's opening scene. Although "Washington says she's a killer," Maya's killer instinct is that of an analytical assassin recruited by the CIA straight out of high school. Like many in Maya's generation, her age of innocence ended with 9/11, which set into motion a career motivated by the overarching aim of finding bin Laden.

Maya is patterned after a real-life counterpart whose degree of contribution to the war on al-Qaeda is a matter of debate. Perhaps because of legal and ethical purposes, all the film's characters are fictionalized, even down to someone meant to be Leon Panetta (played by James Gandolfini) credited only as "C.I.A. Director." Bigelow's clinical approach creates a compelling procedural, but there's also a conspicuous lack of character development and emotional depth, unlike Bigelow's last film, The Hurt Locker, for which she won the Oscar for best director.

The branch tasked with tracking bin Laden is depicted as understaffed and underfunded, but that doesn't mean its staff members aren't subjected to the weight of great expectations. Still, the geopolitical context of their mission is merely hinted at. The presidential transition from Bush to Obama only comes in the form of a TV interview in which Obama denounces the use of torture, a broadcast that plays in the background as intelligence operatives pay little attention to it. Otherwise, the tumult over the torture program only arises during a key conversation between Maya and her colleague Dan (Jason Clarke), a frequent purveyor of "enhanced interrogation techniques" who eventually accepts a transfer back to Langley to avoid being "the last one holding the dog collar when the oversight committee comes."

Reportedly, Bigelow and Boal planned to film a far more open-ended version of Zero Dark Thirty that concluded with bin Laden's apparent disappearance into the mountains of Tora Bora. Then bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, and the filmmakers had to adjust their finale. The result is a taut 30-minute final act chronicling the raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, one of the most gripping, compelling movie sequences of the year and where Bigelow should have nailed down another Oscar nomination. It's also noticeably distinct from the film's previous two hours, a more more detailed and deliberate recounting than the broader, comparatively disjointed perusal that precedes it.

Nonetheless, Boal's screenplay opens and closes with acts of cold-blooded violence whose righteousness is left to the viewpoint and conscience of the beholder. The refusal of Zero Dark Thirty to take a moral stand mustn't be confused for immorality. And while this narrative about the search for Osama bin Laden is sometimes as muddled as the mission itself, its clarity of purpose is as steadfast as SEAL Team 6.