TWO STARS

 

Not content with decimating the White House in his 1996 sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day, director Roland Emmerich reduces the Washington landmark to rubble again in this preposterous, high-octane action thriller.

White House Down is an all guns blazing tale of gung-ho heroism and flag-waving patriotism which unfolds during a terrorist attack on the US President’s iconic seat of power.

The similarities to Olympus Has Fallen, starring Gerard Butler, are inescapable. On the surface, the two films follow the same narrative trajectory, pitting a single man against hordes of gun-toting adversaries on a suicide mission to rescue the stricken President from diabolical captors. Both films cower in the shadow of nuclear Armageddon but White House Down boasts more creativity with its protracted action sequences, including a hysterically overblown car chase around the grounds of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue replete with the President leaning out of a moving vehicle armed with a rocket launcher.

What White House Down lacks in subtlety, it compensates with knucklehead, adrenaline-pumping thrills and spills. Screenwriter James Vanderbilt provides director Emmerich with the full array of cliches and contrivances.

As long as you disengage your brain from any thought processes for two hours, Emmerich’s picture is entertaining popcorn fodder that is forgotten well before the end credits finish scrolling.