Soon to join Olympus Has Fallen in 2013’s “Let’s eff up Washington, D.C.†department is White House Down. It’s a little disappointing that Abe Lincoln stooped to contribute a blurb for this one — the newscast-style intro doesn’t so much echo 9/11 as bellow it, and while things don’t get any grosser from there, they don’t get any more promising, either. Noted cinematic White House terrorizer and disaster porn propagator Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla) directs Channing Tatum as a gun guy, Jamie Foxx as the president, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as the token female. New York film critic David Edelstein may find himself battling a strong urge to repurpose his withering Olympus Has Fallen review upon release. But if Emmerich has at least managed to steer clear of “straight-ahead red-meat right-wing xenophobic exploitation,†White House Down might be an improvement.
