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.

Nanny McPhee Returns

If you can't say something nice about Audrey Hepburn,
don't say anything at all.

Grade: B –

Director: Susanna White

Starring: Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rhys Ifans, Maggie Smith, Asa Butterfield, Bill Bailey, and Sam Kelly

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hour, 49 minutes

When Nanny McPhee Returns to play governess for another harried English mother, the three children of Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal) are in the midst of fighting the Grays, their two snooty, city cousins. When the youngsters ignore McPhee’s (Emma Thompson) order to cease and desist, one thump of her magic walking stick sends the kids into self-harming convulsions. Two start pulling their own hair or ears; Megsie Green (Lil Woods) cannot stop banging her own head on the floor; Cyril Gray (Eros Vlahos) flips his body in repeated pratfalls; little Vincent Green (Oscar Steer) takes a wood paddle to the family crockery.

For all the later imagery of synchronized swimming piglets and rocket-powered motorbikes, this initial encounter is hard to shake. McPhee releases the children from her spell only after they beg and promise to stop misbehaving. The implication is that the children have gotten their just desserts; some might call it child abuse. Regardless, Isabel looks on in amazement when each child calmly marches off to bed, wishing her good night along the way. Deportment is an easy virtue to embrace when you’re afraid Nanny McPhee is going to make you gouge your own eyes out.

The snaggletooth deus ex machina drop by to help Isabel as she struggles raise her children, hold down a job, and save the family farm from her duplicitous brother-in-law (Rhys Ifans) while her husband is off fighting World War II. The look and structure of the film, like its predecessor, remains a cross between Roald Dahl and George Miller’s Babe films, although it does not duplicate the creativity of the former or the humanism of the latter.

CG renderings of baby elephants and acrobatic swine have the feel of a children’s storybook; not so much the flatulent cows and McPhee’s belching jackdaw. Indeed, the plodding plotline feels freest when McPhee, Cyril, and Norman Green (Asa Butterfield) escape the farm for a trip to the War Office to ascertain the condition of Norman’s father.

The cast is first-rate, particularly Thompson, Vlahos, Maggie Smith as Isabel’s seemingly daft employee Mrs. Docherty, and Ralph Fiennes’ brief cameo as a ramrod war commander and Cyril’s absentee father. Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, provides her usual overemoting and a put-on English accent as thick as the pig poo covering Isabel’s front yard.

While not as rewarding as its predecessor, Nanny McPhee Returns is a simple, unadorned fable that makes for easy family viewing. Still, the continuum of McPhee again swooping in to scare some manners into a gaggle of brats leaves you feeling like you’re not watching Mary Poppins-lite as much as an episode of Supernanny.

Neil Morris

Crazy Heart

Mr. and Mrs. Oscar

Grade: B –

Director: Scott Cooper

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Ferrell, and Robert Duvall

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 52 minutes

“A recovering alcoholic country music singer/songwriter seeks to turn his life around through his relationship with a young woman and her son.”

Older, discerning filmgoers will recognize this synopsis of Tender Mercies, the 1983 Horton Foote-penned film that gave Robert Duvall his only Oscar. More than a quarter-century later, cinematic history is poised to repeat itself with Crazy Heart, a film with the same premise – and a supporting turn by Duvall, for Pete’s sake – that is probably going to give the just-nominated Jeff Bridges his first Academy Award.

Broadly, Crazy Heart rehashes the general theme of the down-and-out has-been looking for both personal and professional redemption. But its most glaring similarity with the likes of True Grit, Million Dollar Baby, The Wrestler, and, yes, Tender Mercies is their ideation of the Jungian archetype of the Wise Old Man, an authority/father figure and spiritual guide that manifests itself in many forms. According the Jung, the Old Man represents the masculine unconscious for women. Conversely, one facet of his ascendancy to Wise Old Man is an integration of the feminine components of the psyche.

Thus, the Wise Old Man is often accompanied in literature by a young girl, personifying the melding of Logos and Eros (Meaning and Life). With the lone exception of The Wrestler, where the two main characters were closer in age, such is the case in all the films mentioned above. (As an ironic aside, Bridges is slated to star in an upcoming Coen Brothers remake of True Grit.)

In Crazy Heart, middle-aged boozy crooner ‘Bad’ Blake (Bridges) suffers a solitary life of faded glory. Once the toast of Nashville, Bad now drives his beat-up pickup from one dustbowl to another, staying in cheap motels and grinding out gigs in seedy bars and bowling allies. Bad’s salvation begins once he launches a romantic relationship with the much-younger Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an aspiring journalist and divorcée raising her 4-year-old son.

Besides its derivative storyline, this directorial debut from co-screenwriter Scott Cooper suffers from a lack of genuine chemistry between its lead actors. Beyond their distracting age difference (28 years), Gyllenhaal – long an indie darling who, admittedly, is also Oscar nominated for her performance here – has gradually devolved her once accomplished acting style into a collection of tics and mannerisms, suggesting a self-indulgence that demands roles and scenes adapt to her method instead of the other way around.

Conflict resolution comes easy, like speed bumps along the route to an altogether anticlimactic finish line. Bad’s sobriety is only an AA meeting montage away. His financial woes instantly vanish once he swallows his pride and starts composing songs again for former protégé, country music star Tommy Sweet (Colin Ferrell), who stands ready to help his erstwhile mentor. And when Bad visits a bar and loses track of Jean’s son, it only takes a few anxious moments for the boy to summarily turn-up; Jean’s ire at Bad’s irresponsibility is massively tempered by the fact that she lets an alcoholic scalawag babysit her son in the first place.

Still, even when Bad is at his baddest, he never fully loses his lovable Lebowski-esque charm. While Crazy Heart has as much originality as a country-standard cover band, Bridges’ terrific solo act is a showstopper. The film is transparently and unabashedly designed as a vehicle for his overdue Oscar, and, frankly, that’s a goal worth endorsing.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at www.indyweek.com