Die Hard or Something Like It: WHITE HOUSE DOWN

Jamie Foxx cuts an Obama-ish figure as President Sawyer in White House Down, the second of two Hollywood action films this year to put the Die Hard template in the White House. Unlike Olympus Has Fallen, the terrible spin on this scenario from earlier this year which found an unlikely group of rogue North Koreans simply shooting their way into the building, this picture finds a far more insidious coalition of bad guys with richer and marginally more believable resonance. The president’s under literal attack here by an organized team of villains made up of hawks, Islamophobes, white supremacists, right-wing conspiracy theorists, and threatened corporate interests. They start by quite literally exploding apart the deadlocked legislative branch as a distraction before quickly moving to take over the White House, holding the cabinet secretaries and an unfortunate tour hostage.

But they didn’t count on one of the tourists being an off-duty capitol policeman played by Channing Tatum. He was there with his political junkie 11-year-old daughter (Joey King), but now he’s loose with the president, trying their best to make it out alive and regain control of the country. The script by James Vanderbilt borrows liberally from the Die Hard template, from the crisp setup that quickly moves the everyman lawman and team of villains (Jason Clarke, Jimmi Simpson, and more) into place, to the family member amongst the hostages, to the escalating stakes, time spent clambering up and down elevator shafts, a henchman who likes Beethoven music, and an only sometimes helpful collection of agents, officials and policemen (James Woods, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Richard Jenkins, Lance Reddick, Michael Murphy) communicating via walkie talkies and cell phones. Unfortunately, the sense of destruction feels slightly out of proportion for the rather modest little action film that’s developing.

It’s not as bloody and ugly as Olympus, but seeing thousands of rounds of ammunition expended during a rather silly car chase on the lawn of the White House dulls the impact of the violence. It’s one thing to see the dome on the Capitol Building collapse, an event that feels too real in presentation, but then why back into punches and punchlines then cut away to linger on an unseemly shot of an airplane disintegrating? It’s so often so juvenile and small it feels insensitive to ratchet up the massive damage elsewhere. The stakes often feel very real and personal, but the excessive bombast of it all distracts. But excessive bombast is what director Roland Emmerich is all about. It works in his big splashier disaster movies like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow and here he proves that he can still scale things back to a more contained set piece when he wants to do so.

But it's hard for him to stay small with a script like this. The film is patently preposterous right down to its literal flag-waving conclusion and Emmerich’s such a straight-faced spectacle showman that it almost works. He blew the whole White House up with one swift alien blast in Independence Day. Now he returns to the scene of the crime to spend over two hours torturing the poor place. Grounding the film is Foxx and Tatum, who keep the ridiculous on some recognizably human terms as they race around the house engaging in an almost-all-business relationship that has time for both bonding over the hardships of fatherhood and firing off the occasional snappy one-liner. They’re charming actors and the chemistry between them is natural, easy, and appealing, which is good, since they spend most of the movie alternately hiding from and shooting back at bad guys together. In a nice touch, Foxx puts on his reading glasses before shooting down his first bad guy. It’s like what might’ve happened if Reginald VelJohnson was stuck in Nakatomi Plaza with Bruce Willis instead of stranded outside.

I liked White House Down best when it gave in to its dumbest, broadest impulses, letting reasonably diverting action or genial banter carry it all along. At one point during the climactic action, a big red countdown clock reads 8 minutes until Very Bad Things happen, but characters scramble around for what felt like easily twice that length while the clock slowly ticks down its eternal seconds. That’s funny in an enjoyable stupid blockbuster way. But every time we get bogged down in the increasingly apocalyptic stakes outside the building, some energy gets sucked out of the plotting. Add to that the constant need to yo-yo Tatum’s daughter in and out of danger and the back half of the film grows increasingly grating and uncomfortable.

Around the 100-minute mark I would’ve been ready to enjoy a cathartic climax, but after another half hour ticks by, I was just ready to leave. I was rolling with the ridiculous, but every time I was asked to take the events seriously, I felt myself sinking in my seat. I did like how the inciting incident of the plot seems to be the president’s proposal of peace in the Middle East, the prospect ironically getting all the baddies riled up, but so much of the film is playing with politics in awkward ways that get blown all out of proportion by the damage on display. A shorter, less trigger-happy version of the film would’ve been better, but at least in its current form it’s still the year’s best Die Hard movie in a year that had an actual Die Hard movie. That’s less of a compliment than it sounds.

A Man Named "Bad": CRAZY HEART

Crazy Heart is a stunningly self-assured debut feature written and directed by Scott Cooper. It’s confident, steady work that wisely foregrounds its lead performance, which also happens to be its best asset. If at worst the film seems to be cliché, it serves to remind us that some peoples’ lives sound like a cliché. There’s a specificity to the film that keeps it honest, especially in the deeply felt and tenderly wrought performance from Jeff Bridges as “Bad” Blake, an alcoholic country singer whose glory days are a couple of decades behind him. Here is a character that feels real despite being a familiar type. As the film ends, with two characters literally walking into the sunset, there’s a feeling that the film may be ending, but the characters will continue to exist, pulling their weary selves through one more day, one more week, and one more song.

At its most interesting the film is a portrait of the modern country music scene with a striking dichotomy between the raw, intimate singer-songwriter style and the super-slick productions that border on pop. In the film, Blake’s protégé (Colin Farrell) illuminates this difference. He has surpassed his mentor in popularity and success, selling out huge arenas while Blake fills dive bars and bowling alleys. The difference is one of glittery buses on one side and beat-up pickups on the other. And yet, there is no demonization of this difference. Its matter of fact interesting and it leads up to a brilliant set of scenes in the center of the film that play out with beautiful ease. Bridges and Farrell flesh in back-story in a natural, unforced way, not through exposition, necessarily, but through acting and tone. We get a sense of their history and their friendship without any kind of forced conflict or tension, and especially without pages of on-the-nose dialogue. Neither man is a villain. Neither man is a hero. They simply are.

This respect extends to the other relationship that is central to the film. The radiant Maggie Gyllenhaal is a small-town reporter who falls for “Bad” Blake. She sees through the grizzled exterior and spies the soul of a true artist. He begins to work on a new song that might provide a needed boost to his income. We hear snippets of lyrics and melody for at least half of the film. Only at the very end do we hear a character slowly strumming a guitar, rasping out the words until the sound and scene segues into a full-blown country-radio version played by another character which carries us into the end credits with the feeling of artistic accomplishment. We have seen a great new song develop before our very eyes and ears.

If the relationship between Bridges and Gyllenhaal feels a little forced, and it does, it’s never the fault of the actors, who bring to their roles a bone-deep sense of characterization. Bridges, especially, brings a sense of seriousness and depth to characterization with a performance that’s worn comfortably. The late addition of a character played by the unmatchable Robert Duvall only adds to this feeling of expertly performed roles. The plot may grind them down in sometimes tired ways, but they never let it feel false. This is a film that is respectful and intelligent with well-earned sentiment. It left me with a deeply felt sense of satisfaction that settled comfortably upon me as the credits began to roll.