WHITE HOUSE DOWN Is Ridiculous ... But Also Ridiculously Entertaining

WHITE HOUSE DOWN Review:

- The marketing of White House Down was all wrong. I can't help but wonder if the misdirection contributed to the film's underwhelming box office performance. The ads and trailers made this out to be some sort of gritty, hardcore action film. But in reality, it's anything but. This is, thankfully, vintage Roland Emmerich. Big, bombastic, cheesy as all hell, and possessing of a childlike glee and unironic grandiosity that has become Emmerich's trademark over the years. Think of it this way: Spielberg's classic family films appeal to your inner eight-year-old - wish-fulfillment fantasies that play off of childhood fears and flights of fancy. Michael Bay's cynical Transformer films repackage childhood nostalgia for the too-cool-for-toys high school jocks. Emmerich hits that sweet spot just in between. His movies are BEST MOVIE EVER! material for twelve and thirteen year olds everywhere. They're fundamentally innocent and naive, but there's just enough over-the-top violence, epic scope, and strategically-timed profanity to give them that added cool-factor. I mean, I still remember that day in 1994, coming out of the theater after watching Independence Day, having been rocked to my twelve year old core. This, I was convinced, was the best thing I'd ever seen. The movie had everything I ever dreamed of in one film: aliens, aerial battles, Area 51, and Jews kicking ass. It was everything my preteen self wanted in a movie and more. I imagine that one or two twelve year olds are going to get a similar feeling of "best thing ever" after walking out of WHITE HOUSE DOWN. No, it's not in the same league as Independence Day, but there's a similarly unbridled sense of movie-making joy at play here. It's not particularly smart or cerebral or sophisticated. Logic is sparse. But holy hell, does Roland Emmerich go all out here. Lacking a subtle bone in his body, Emmerich crafts a movie that is joyously, eye-rollingly ridiculous, and, undoubtedly hugely entertaining. You will probably lose brain cells - many brain cells - while watching it. But hey, this is what Emmerich does, and does well. It's a summer blockbuster for the twelve year old in all of us.

Where Emmerich has always drawn comparisons to Spielberg is the way in which the big action arcs of his movies intertwine with more personal arcs that are, in their own way, just as integral to the story. And so, Emmerich takes his time in this one setting the stage for the carnage to come. He introduces us to Channing Tatum's John Cale - a White House security staffer who's hoping to make a career upgrade to the President's secret service detail. It's all part of the divorced Cale's plan to get his life back on track, and to impress his preteen daughter Emily (Joey King) - a budding political and presidential buff. When Cale goes for his interview (conducted by Maggie Gyllenhaal's head-of-secret-service, who happens to be an old flame), Emily accompanies him, so that the two can take a tour of the White House together afterwards. As the two take the tour (and Cale mopes after being denied the job - seems he's got raw potential but not the qualifications), all hell breaks loose. As it turns out, the President (a very Obama-esque Jamie Foxx) is looking to sign a controversial Middle East peace treaty, and certain right wingers want to stop it at any cost. With the help of an inside man or two, the White House is attacked by a paramilitary group (led by Zero Dark Thirty's Jason Clarke), and Emily is part of a group taken hostage by the bad guys. Of course, Cale is left as all that's standing between the attackers and their potentially earth-shattering plans.

Here's another area where the movie's marketing was misleading: the ads made it seem like this was to be the Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx show. But the truth is much more exciting, in that the two leads are surrounded by a ton of fantastic supporting players. A trademark of Emmerich's films is a strong ensemble cast, and White House Down is no different. And for a movie like this, you need people who can pull off earnest and over-the-top without getting too silly. Luckily, the movie is in some ways carried by young Joey King. She's great as Emily - smart and sweet, but creeping up on teenager-ish smart alecky tendencies. We all know that kid characters can be super annoying in this sort of movie, unless played by a special talent who knows how to play things just right. Luckily, King is up to the task, and plays a kid who other kids can identify with and root for, and who adults will only roll their eyes at once or twice.

Also, dude ... Lance Reddick is in this movie. He's really just a minor side character, but I'm still going to mention him right up top. Because Lance Reddick is awesome, and he is basically *the* best actor in the biz at selling lines like "Sir, Norad has been compromised." and making otherwise insane-sounding things seem totally badass and gravitas-infused. Note to all movie marketing people: put Lance Reddick in your movie trailers, and I'll know that the film is legit. Meanwhile - and from the trailers, who knew? - a crap ton of other awesome people are in this movie. People like the great Richard Jenkins, as the meek Speaker of the House, and James Woods, as the retiring Head of Presidential Detail, who ends up playing a major, unexpected part in the film. Yep, Lance Reddick, Richard Jenkins, and James Woods are ALL IN THIS MOVIE, and they each kick a fair degree of ass, hamming it up and doing what they do best.

Jason Clarke is great as a take-no-prisoners mercenary type. This guy is going places. Also excellent as a villain is Kevin Rankin - so good on Justified as Devil - as Clarke's redneck right-hand-man. Jimmi Simpson is also awesomely evil as the team's psycho-sinister computer hacker. This is another area where Emmerich channels Spielberg - each of his characters has some quirk or defining trait that makes them stand out. No generic stuff here. Suffice it to say, what could have been a bland team of villains is made hugely entertaining thanks to the antics of Clarke, Rankin, and Simpson.

As for Tatum and Foxx, both are good, but in some ways, they may be the weakest part of the movie. Tatum is okay as the leading man, but to me, he still lacks the sort of action-hero charisma that you want for this sort of movie. It's weird, because he's proven that he can be funny as hell in movies like 21 Jump St. But as an heir apparent to the Stallones and Schwarzennegers of the world, I'm not quite sure he has what it takes. Foxx, meanwhile, was so good in Django, and perhaps that movie was still too fresh in my mind to take him seriously as the kind of guy who could become president. Foxx adopts several Obama mannerisms and tics (he even chews Nicorette gum), but to me, there was never any doubt that his President Sawyer would be able to kick ass when called upon. And so scenes where we're supposed to be shocked and delighted that this President can mix it up with the terrorists mano e mano, well, they aren't all that shocking. And Foxx plays President Sawyer as a somewhat comedic character - you can see him revert to his over-the-top Living Color days when he's quipping and spouting one liners. Point being, this is the sort of movie where the actors need to play it totally straight for things to work (think Bill Pullman in Independence Day). Foxx is a little too broadly comic at times for us to take his Prez very seriously.

Back to Emmerich for a second ... the director does give in to modernity a bit and throws in some quick-cut editing and shaky-cam fight scenes here and there. Mostly though, watching WHITE HOUSE DOWN is a pleasant reminder of how a good action director can craft a battle or fight scene that's exciting and tells a story, all while being relatively easy to follow. Emmerich doesn't get enough credit as a great action director - he does Michael Bay style bombast without all the visual excess - he keeps things clean, and knows how to do big money shots for maximum dramatic effect. If anything, he at times overdoes the melodrama. Like I said, there isn't a subtle bone in his body. And so certain moments are *so* melodramatic that they are just too much. At the same time, I think that Emmerich is above all a showman, and he seems pretty well aware that he's crafting over-the-top, borderline ridiculous entertainment. He knows he's doing a live-action cartoon, and the humor and numerous winks at the audience in the film speak to that.

At the end of the day, on the grand sliding scale of Roland Emmerich summer blockbusters, this one falls well below the legendary awesomeness of Independence Day, but well above more mediocre efforts like The Day After Tomorrow. And, hey, maybe it's just me, but as the years go by, Emmerich's old-school brand of popcorn spectacle takes on an increasing tinge of nostalgic charm. What was once controversial and shocking now feels safe, reliable, and relatively harmless. In the world of Emmerich, Presidents can personally deliver K-O's to terrorists, a down-on-his-luck blue-collar schmo can save the world *and* win back the love of his daughter, and nobody - and I mean nobody - can get one over on the good ol' U-S-of-A. Cheesy? Sure. Ridiculous? Hell yeah. But in some ways, this is all you could want from a dumb-fun summer blockbuster. Bring the whole family, and enjoy.

My Grade: B+

JACK REACHER Is Retro Action Movie Comfort Food

JACK REACHER Review:

- Jack Reacher is one of the most by-the-numbers, predictable action flicks I've seen in a long while. But there's also an undeniable comfort-food aspect to the film, and several moments of over-the-top coolness. What's so strange is that the movie feels like it came out of a time-warp from some long-ago land of Hollywood crime capers. It's definitely a throwback, coming off as a mash-up of everything from Bullit, to Dirty Harry, to Rambo, to 90's procedural thrillers like Kiss the Girls. And Jack, as a character, is sort of a mash-up of all those action-movie archtypes - he's got the smoothness of Bullit, the mean streak of Dirty Harry, and he's an ex-military lone-wolf drifter like John Rambo. So JACK REACHER comes off as feeling a bit bland at times, except that it's got just enough badassery to make it perfect for a rainy afternoon. What I'm saying is - prepare to catch this one on TNT many, many times in the years to come.

Now, one weird thing about JACK REACHER is that the title character, from the books, is supposed to be this big, burly, grizzled badass who stays off the grid and answers to no one. Essentially, this would have been the perfect vehicle for an 80's or 90's-era Kurt Russell. But instead, we get the 50-ish but still lean and boyish Tom Cruise in the part, and it makes for an odd contrast with the material. So much of the dialogue, as written for the screen by writer/director Christopher McQuarrie ... you can hear how it would sound pretty badass if delivered in a Snake Plissken-esque growl. But from the mouth of Cruise, a lot of it lacks much bite. So some of the lines that might otherwise have been grimly funny end up falling a bit flat. The funny thing is that lead actress Rosamund Pike, playing a crusading lawyer, seems to be in full Lifetime Original Movie mode - delivering all of her lines in a breathy manner, bosoms heaving under low-cut tops, seemingly waiting for Reacher to reach over and give er' the jack (sorry, had to say it). All that's needed to complete the old-school action-movie throwback is to have her and Reacher engage in some tastefully silhouetted carnal coupling (alas, McQuarrie shows some restraint there).

But back to Cruise, he's good, and as always, seems to put 110% into the role - but you also wonder if this could have been better with a more grizzled sort of leading man in the role - someone who could make it their own, and make Reacher the action icon that McQuarrie and co. want him to be. Instead, we seem to be watching Cruise as Cruise. And that means that the movie sometimes has an odd effect of making it seem like we're watching a movie less about Jack Reacher, and more about Tom Cruise being the smartest, quickest, baddest dude on the planet. So I feel like Jack Reacher maybe has some potential to be a cool, iconic character. But the way this movie works ... they probably could have held off on calling it Jack Reacher, and just called it TOM CRUISE: THE MOVIE.

The thing is, Tom Cruise does a good Tom Cruise, and even though he doesn't really feel like Jack Reacher, per se, he's still entertaining. And ... he's surrounded by a top-of-the-line supporting cast, all of whom (like Pike, who I spoke of earlier) seem to be having fun going old-school and very much embracing the cheesy nature of the film, while never really winking at the audience. I mean, Richard Jenkins - he seems to be everywhere lately - is quite good as Pike's shift-seeming father, who happens to be the District Attorney. Also good is David Oyelowo, as the lead police officer on the case that Reacher is working. There's also a strong performance from Michael Raymond-James (whoo! - TERRIERS shout-out!) as a lieutenant of the lead bad guy, and from Jai Courtney as his main muscle.

Speaking of the lead bad guy, holy crap. WERNER HERZOG is the Big Bad in this movie, and he infuses this otherwise straightforward flick with a heaping helping of crazysauce. He is awesome. If only he had even more screen time ... although I also suspect that Herzog might be most effective in small doses. Every time he says something awesome - like his story about having to cut off his own fingers to survive imprisonment in a Siberian prison ... he leaves you wanting more.

Also ... Robert Duvall enters the picture about three-quarters of the way through the movie, and he, also, is pretty awesome. As anyone who reads my movie reviews knows, I am a sucker for movies in which an old guy gets to kick ass one last time. And this movie has such moments for the great Duvall, and basically gives the legendary actor a perfect role in the film where he can come in, be badass, and get in some great little lines laced with the wisdom of a man who's done and seen it all.

Like I said, there's a real comfort-food quality to the movie. There's something to be said for the simple pleasures of an action movie with no CGI, with a measured slow-burn pace, with no rapid-fire cuts or editing, and with twists that are predictable, but still sort of satisfying in their predictability. This is a total "movie" movie, the kind where you'll yell things like "oh, I bet *he's* the inside-man!" to your friends whole watching, and you'll probably be right. The plot is a twisty but pretty straightforward yarn, about an old army associate of Jack's who's been accused of carrying out a mass sniper-rifle killing spree. Jack hears about the case and decides to investigate, and as it turns out there's a lot more to the crime than meets-the-eye. Eventually, he's hired on by the lawyer representing the accused sniper as an investigator, and goes about uncovering the truth behind the killings. As for Jack, the movie spends a lot of time mythologizing him - he's a drifter with no car and no real record. He buys clothes at goodwill and takes the Greyhound bus system, riding across America. He answers to no one. He's a killer when he needs to be, but he's got his own code of justice.

JACK REACHER stumbles in a number of scenes - with a lot of clunkiness and cheesiness. It's overlong, and takes its sweet time in arriving at its admittedly exciting finale. But the movie's also got enough badassery - some solid action, great turns from Herzog and Duvall - to make this worth checking out. Not a movie-of-the-year candidate, but a fun little retro dip into old-school action movie familiarity. Like I said, the perfect movie for a rainy afternoon on the couch.

My Grade: B

KILLING THEM SOFTLY Is a Pitch-Black Crime Comedy With Bite

KILLING THEM SOFTLY Review:

- Andrew Dominik made one of the best movies of the last decade in the underrated Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The man is clearly an ultra-ambitious director with little interest in sticking to convention, and is certainly a talent worth keeping an eye on. His latest film, KILLING THEM SOFTLY - his first since Jesse James - is another genre-bending boundary-pusher. It's a pitch-black crime flick that blends the uber-violence of Scorsese, the outlandish gallows-humor-laden dialogue of Tarantino, and the surrealistic, existentialist flourishes of the Coen Bros. The result is a fascinating, ultra-intense, often darkly hilarious movie that aims high, and that occasionally lives up to the size of its ambitions. Certainly, this ain't your run-of-the-mill crime flick.

In Killing Them Softly, we see the politics of American crime juxtaposed with American national politics. Namely, set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis and near-economic collapse, we see a parallel sort of  crisis playing itself out in the Boston underworld. When two low-level hoods decide to hold up a card game - whose participants include any number of the city's most prominent mob members - they inadvertently set off a chain of events that threatens to disrupt the entire local crime infrastructure. We follow the money to the top of the criminal food chain, where enforcers and hitmen are brought in in order to clean up the mess, resulting in a flurry of violence intended to reestablish the status quo and get back to business as usual.

Dominick is not subtle in how he juxtaposes the main story with the national financial crisis happening in the background. All throughout the film, we see and hear snippets of news coverage from 2008. We see George W. Bush, John McCain, and Barack Obama each weighing in on the ongoing economic firestorm. And as each talks of measures being taken to curb the problem, as we see Obama talk of hope and change, we in turn see a bleak, dark, criminal underworld that is both reflects and perverts the American Dream. Dominick takes a big gamble here - using political footage from 2008 so prominently means that he better have a damn good thematic thread that interweaves throughout the film. If he's trying to make a grand point, he better make it well. I think he only partially succeeds. I think most people will leave the movie scratching their heads, trying to connect the dots and wondering what, exactly, Dominick is trying to say here. In some cases, that's good - a work that invites discussion and open-interpretation can be a great thing. The problem is that KILLING THEM SOFTLY hits you over the head so hard with its juxtapositions that it seems to want to make a clear, easily-determined point. But what that point is, exactly - or what it all means - doesn't entirely register.

But ... forget about all that for a second. Because honestly, even if the political overtones don't 100% work, a lot of things in the movie do. Again, forget about the complaints above as I tell you that the real meat of the movie - the crime stuff - is mostly super-badass. There is a dark, dark intensity here that is edge-of-your-seat. And the humor - pitch-black - is great. Aided by a top-flight cast, Dominick crafts gripping heist scenes  and hilarious dialogue exchanges.

The plot of the film revolves around two career-criminal screw-ups - Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) who are convinced to attempt a risky, but potentially lucrative, scheme. The idea is that if they rob a high-powered underworld card game, no one will suspect them. Instead, they figure that the criminal higher-ups will point the finger of blame at a hood named Trattman (Ray Liotta), who tried to rob it once before. As it turns out, the robbery has numerous consequences both intended and unintended. It does indeed put the hapless Trattman in the hot-seat, but it also disrupts the regular card game now that the participants are afraid that they could be robbed at gunpoint at any time. The dissolution of the game, of course, creates a major financial vacuum in the criminal world. And so Jackie Cogan (Bradd Pitt) - a cool, collected, utterly ruthless mob enforcer, is brought in to straighten things out. Taking orders from a mysterious, well-dressed mob-lawyer (Richard Jenkins), Cogan recruits his best heavy - Mickey (James Gandolfini) to kill who needs to be killed and make sure that the money is once again flowing.

Let me talk for a second about the card game robbery that sets the movie's plot in motion. Wow - what a sequence. Mixing comedy (Frankie and Russell have yellow dishwashing gloves instead of regular gloves) and uber-intensity (any one of the heavy-hitters at the card table could whip out a gun at any moment and plug the two mooks), the whole robbery sequence pulses with the constant threat of danger. It's a bravura bit of filmmaking. Elsewhere, Killing Them Softly has some of the most darkly humorous exchanges I've ever seen on film. Frankie and Russell have a great dumb-and-dumber dynamic, and their dimwitted, drug-addled conversations are fantastic and funny. Same goes for just about every scene involving James Gandolfini's unstable hitman Mickey - a guy who sheds no tears over killing a man but who keeps getting broken up over the poor state of his marriage. He drowns his sorrows in an ocean of drinking, prostitutes, and lethargy ... which leads to a great contrast with Pitt's on-point, uber-cool Jackie. Pitt also has a great chemistry with Richard Jenkins - with Pitt's ear-to-the-street know-how coming up against Jenkins' ear-to-the-big-bosses bureaucratic bookkeeping. The various dialogue exchanges have a Tarantino-esque sizzle to them, and are consistently entertaining and clever - and often, as mentioned, really freakin' funny.

And the cast is basically perfect for this sort of thing. McNairy and Mendelsohn have an awesome comedic chemistry. Pitt's role isn't that different from others he's played, but we all know that Pitt is at his best when he's playing someone who's at least a little bit nuts. And Jackie Cogan - thought cool as a cucumber on the outside - is definitely at least a little bit nuts. He's a guy who will act all buddy-buddy before blowing your brains out, who will talk casually about beating the crap out of a guy the same as he would about running an errand. Ray Liotta gives Trattman a starry-eyed charm that makes it that much more hard-to-watch when he's set up to be the mob's fall guy for the robbery. A great turn from the crime flick veteran. Gandolfini is awesome here. He puts 110% into the role of Mickey, it's one of those acting jobs where the actor goes all-in, making every lip-curl, finger-point, and labored breath a part of the character. Jenkins - playing a character in some ways similar to the one he portrayed in Cabin in the Woods, is also reliably excellent.

Dominick lends most of the film a straightforward intensity, but he also tries for a number of artistic flourishes (in addition to the political excerpts). Some work very well (a slo-mo scene of Pitt gunning down a victim on the road), others seem like too much and go on for too long (an attempt to embellish Frankie and Russell's drugged-up conversation with lots of trippy fade-outs becomes more annoying than novel). But Dominick displays a lot of raw talent and exciting ingenuity here. It's clear the guy's legit - you just wonder if he is trying to do too much with a story that's essentially a pretty straightforward crime yarn.

And that's why KILLING THEM SOFTLY is so fascinating, and a movie that is well worth checking out despite its flaws. If left to its own devices, the story of Jackie Cogan and the darkly-absurd inner-workings of America's criminal underground may have made for a compelling little film. Guys like Scorsese have taken such stories and made them multilayered American parables, without ever needing to get overtly political or on-the-nose with their broader themes. But Dominick swings for the fences, and tries to make a mini-epic out of this relatively compact and small-scale story. It could have worked ... maybe. But I don't know if he convincingly made me believe that the crime story in Killing Them Softly was somehow a microcosm of America or the financial crisis. Still, I suppose the movie does make the point that even crooks can feel the squeeze when the economy is hurting, and that there is indeed a hidden, shadowy layer to the great American economy that is co-dependent on the same institutions and rides the same ebbs and flows as any other business. Point being - the film says some interesting things, some funny things, and some pretty damn bleak things about America ... even if what it says never feels totally cohesive. But there is still a cerebral quality to the sex drugs and violence that tinges the film's nihilistic tone with a bit of thought-provoking intellectualism. It's a very interesting experiment - and we need more movies that take these kinds of swing-for-the-fences risks.

My Grade: B+