Mrs. Writes-a-Latte

I saw ‘White House Down’ last night and as my 30-by-30 list requires me to write a review about every movie I watch, here I am. It also requires that I watch a new movie every two weeks, but I don’t have that luxury for numerous reasons which I’m not going to get into right now, so let’s focus on the one I saw last night, shall we?

I am going to write this review more like a versus list because a few months ago, I saw a movie not so different from this one and I cannot help but compare because frankly, White House Down (WHD) & Olympus Has Fallen (OHF) have a lot in common (did that rhyme? No? Maybe the 7Up is making my head spin. Whatever.)

Well, what do you know? I am not the first to have made this connection, clearly, because I effortlessly found this image online and there I was thinking I’ll have to take the trouble of putting those two together. Anyway, maybe the image is not mine (I have linked to the source) the opinions, most definitely are mine.

Before we look at WHD individually, let us first look at a comparision between that and OHF because, for those who have seen the latter, it’ll make things much easier.

First of all, there isn’t much of a difference in the core storyline: It’s a normal day, people are going about their work and suddenly they realise that The White House is under attack. One man survives all the bullets fired towards him (whereas trained snipers take the hit on the first bullet and drop dead) and bravely saves the President of the United States without caring for his own life and yay, he’s the hero and, ummm, soo delicious. There are a lot of bullets fired, missiles explode, and bombs explode, but in the end, everyone is happy and there’s a slightly emotional scene to wrap the whole saga up. That’s pretty much what both the movies are about.

Here’s what’s different…

	Olympus Has Fallen		White House Down
Who attacks the White House?	Terrorists		Inside Conspiracy
What do they want?	Nuclear Launch Codes		Nuclear Launch Codes
	Not so different
Who saves the day?	Gerard Butler		Channing Tatum + his 11 year old daughter
Job Description	Formerly on the Security Detail of the President		Wants to be on the Security Detail of the President
Who does he have to save?	The President and the President’s son		The President and his own daughter
How does he save them?	Using the President’s Satellite Phone to establish contact with the Speaker.
	Not so different
The President is..	White		Black
The President wants to make peace with	South Korea		The Middle East
In the absence of the President, number of acting Presidents sworn in	1		2
			They probably just wanted to be a step ahead or something 😛
Comic Relief?	Little bit, here and there, but not much.		The President and a few other characters are so funny.
In the end?	The White House is near destroyed, but everyone is happy.
	I was really tempted to say ‘It doesn’t even matter’ 😛

 

These are just a few points, but broadly speaking if you’ve already seen OHF, WHD is not very different in terms of the whole movie experience. At the end of it, you don’t feel like you’ve watched something new and you feel like you’ve wasted two hours in watching something like this before.

But if you haven’t, then here’s what I thought about the movie, aside from the fact it was a total copy of OHF.

• Channing Tatum is a treat to watch and so is the little actress – Joey King who plays his daughter. It’s hard to believe that people this young can act so well. I was amazed. I’ve seen Tatum before in Step Up but there he was this cold, almost emotionless character. It was nice to see him smile and he’s kind of cute. I remember calling him delicious somewhere in this post 😛
• The President’s sense of humour makes the movie slightly funny, which – considering the fact that his house is under attack with men holding machine guns and heavy ammunition running about all over the place shooting people – is really weird. But that makes him more of a real person than he appears to be.
• He’s not the only person who is funny. There is this tour guide, who is a slightly important character, and (can you believe it?) he asks one of the men with the guns to be careful with the stuff around the White House because it was really ancient and valuable. It seemed like he had a death wish.
• The movie is made really well, despite (I cannot say this enough) the striking similarity with OHF. I liked how the movie is shot, the dialogues are well written and if this was made first, I would have loved it!
• Yes, a situation like this is highly unrealistic, and a few times I was like, “Are they kidding?” but isn’t that what movies are about?

Verdict
Watch it if you haven’t seen OHF before. It has a good storyline, some really good action and a great plot. If you don’t like to hear guns firing constantly, this movie is not for you.

If you have watched OHF, don’t waste your time on this. It is kind of like Alaipaayuthey (in Tamil) remade into Saathiya (in Hindi) – the actors are different, but the story is the same.

I know I’m lagging behind in my book reviews, but I’ll be back soon with those too. And a post here and there as well, something other than the reviews. Have a nice evening. I’ll get back to my 7Up 😉

Nikita ❤️