-By Warner Todd Huston
On Saturday I saw the new summer actioner White House Down and found the main conceit of the film laughably stupid, as is all Hollywood fare of this type. Oh, it was a fun flick if you just forget about reality, and I am not just talking about the comic book-like action sequences, either. No, the whole reason why the White House was coming “down,” as it were, was just plain idiotic.
The flick, starring Channing Tatum as a beleaguered Secret Service applicant and Jamie Foxx as the President of the United States, was typical of the over-the-top sort of action flicks that director Roland Emmerich and the those filmmakers like him are so wont to produce. Emmerich was the director of such films as Independence Day (1996) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004), so you know there are going to be big explosions and lots of bullets and car chases.
In fact, there was a sort of inside joke on director Emmerich’s penchant for destroying Washington when one character, a White House tour guide, pointed out that the main section of the White House was destroyed in Independence Day, a film Emmerich directed.
Director Roland Emmericah destroys the White House in “Independence Day” 1996
Still, it was a fun movie with gobs of action spiced with humor and delicious gotcha endings for the bad guys. It is taken from granted that no one human could survive what was thrown at Tatum’s character in the flick. You just have to go with it. And, instead of totally destroying the White House, in this fim Emmerich collapses the dome of the Capitol Building while leaving the White House a scarred, but still standing mess.
But the central premise of why the White House was being attacked was just the sort of empty headed, feelsgoodism that shows exactly why liberals should never be in charge of anything of importance.
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