At this point I can't even recall much from the White House under attack movie that appeared in theaters earlier this year,
Olympus Has Fallen. I remember it being a rather care free, brainless piece of fun with a surprisingly brutal aspect to it while more than anything being a tribute to those 90's action flicks of yesteryear that had now been replaced by superheroes and sequels. While I always expected Roland Emmerich's version of this similar story,
White House Down, to be the clear victor in terms of quality it turns out they are neck and neck as far as pure entertainment value goes, but with the more pedigreed cast, the bigger budget and a director more adept at handling large scale action sequences Emmerich's version of
Die Hard in the White House seems as if it will have the repeatability factor moreso than the Gerard Butler redux that will no doubt still go down as the lesser of the two. Though I'll have to wait and see if anything about
White House Down remains ingrained in my mind come September as of now it is certainly the film I enjoyed more. The comparison between these two films is inevitable as it has been lurking over both releases since word came out two movies with the same premise were being released within months of one another. This didn't seem to hurt the second one out of the gate last year in the same situation (
Snow White & the Huntsmen easily trounced
Mirror, Mirror) but these two movies are much more similar in tone and it's clear that despite Channing Tatum's mass appeal to the ladies they don't necessarily care to see him in a straight up action flick. It is his charisma and the chemistry that exists between he and co-star Jamie Foxx that makes the film so endearing and in turn makes this film the experience I took more fun away from. That could be a good or bad thing depending on what you're expecting or what you were looking for, but Emmerich has always had a way about making his films self-aware while still executing action set pieces with seamless transitions between the tones. He does the same here balancing the ridiculous with the tongue-in-cheek that allows the audience to realize the majority of whats happening on screen is in fact ridiculous, but brushing it off as nothing more than exhilarating, B-movie fun which is exactly what this is supposed to be.
