White House Down Information

White House Down is a 2013 American action film directed by Roland Emmerich about an assault on the White House by a paramilitary group and the Capitol Police Officer who tries to stop them. The film's screenplay is by James Vanderbilt, and it stars Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, with Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Woods, Jason Clarke and Richard Jenkins in supporting roles. The film was released on June 28, 2013 and has since grossed more than $205 million worldwide. White House Down is one of two films released in 2013 that deals with a terrorist attack on the White House, the other being Olympus Has Fallen.

Plot

John Cale (Channing Tatum) is a U.S. Capitol Police officer assigned to Speaker of the House Eli Raphelson (Richard Jenkins) after Cale saved Raphelson's nephew's life during a tour in Afghanistan. Cale is struggling to develop a better relationship with his daughter Emily (Joey King), who has a strong enthusiasm for politics. He hopes to impress her by getting a job with the Secret Service, but the interview is conducted by Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a former college acquaintance of his who believes that he is unqualified due to a lack of respect for authority. After lying to Emily about the outcome of the interview, she and Cale join a tour of the White House. At the same time, U.S. President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) proposes a controversial peace treaty between allied countries to remove military forces from the Middle East.

Meanwhile, a man disguised as a janitor detonates a bomb at the center of the United States Capitol, destroying the building's dome. Raphelson - who was in the Capitol but is uninjured - and Finnerty are taken to a secure command centre underneath the Pentagon while Vice President Alvin Hammond (Michael Murphy) is taken aboard Air Force One. The White House is put on lockdown separating Cale from Emily (who had left the tour group to use the restroom). Meanwhile, mercenaries led by Emil Stenz (Jason Clarke) start killing off most of the Secret Service and take the tour group hostage, but Cale manages to take a gun from a mercenary named Carl Killick (Kevin Rankin) and escapes to go and find his daughter. Following protocol, retiring Head of the Presidential Detail Martin Walker (James Woods) escorts President Sawyer and his detail to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Once Sawyer gains access, Walker kills everyone else in Sawyer's detail, revealing himself to be the leader of the attack; he wants revenge for the death of his son who was killed during a botched black ops mission. Cale, who fails to find Emily, kills a mercenary and takes his gun and radio. Using the radio, Cale locates and rescues the President.

Walker and Stenz bring in Skip Tyler (Jimmi Simpson) to hack into the defense system, but they still require Sawyer to activate the nuclear football. Emily, while hiding, records a video of the mercenaries and uploads it to YouTube before eventually being captured by Killick. Walker demands $400 million from the Federal Reserve as ransom for the hostages. Cale and Sawyer manage to get in contact with the Pentagon, and Finnerty tells Cale to get Sawyer out through a series of secret underground tunnels. Finnerty then uses Emily's video to discover the mercenaries' identities, discovering that they used to work for various government agencies and radical political groups. They are informed that Stenz, a former Special Forces operative, was disavowed and burned on mission, leading to his capture by the Taliban. They also discover that Walker has terminal cancer, suggesting his involvement to be a suicide mission and that the attack is not for ransom. Cale and Sawyer find the tunnel gate rigged with an explosive and are forced to escape in a presidential limousine. After a car chase/shootout with Stenz on the White House lawn, Cale and Sawyer are flipped into the White House pool after Cale gets distracted by the sight of Killick holding Emily at gunpoint. A gunfight erupts which results in an explosion that leaves Sawyer and Cale presumed dead. Hammond is then sworn in as President.

When Cale and Sawyer reveal they are still alive, they learn Hammond has approved an aerial incursion by Delta Force to take back the White House. Knowing the mercenaries have Javelin surface-to-air missiles, Cale tries but fails to stop the mercenaries from shooting down the helicopters. Cale gets into a fight with Stenz and ends up dropping his White House passes for himself and Emily while escaping. Having already learned of Emily from the video, Stenz, knowing that she is Cale's daughter, takes her to Walker in the Oval Office. Meanwhile, Tyler finishes the upload to NORAD and launches a missile at Air Force One, killing everyone on board, including Hammond. Raphelson is then sworn in as President and, in a last ditch effort to end the crisis, orders an air strike on the White House. Finnerty informs Cale of Raphelson's decision.

Walker tells Cale over the White House intercom to surrender Sawyer or he will kill Emily. Sawyer ultimately surrenders himself to save Emily, knowing Cale could still save them both if he was free. Holding the pair in the Oval Office, Walker reveals to Sawyer that his motive for the attack was to convey a message of American power. Because of Sawyer's dislike of military force, as well as backing out of the mission that killed his son, Walker had grown to believe Sawyer was too weak to be President; by launching a nuclear attack on Iran, Walker had hoped to regain international respect for America and avenge his own personal loss. He asks for Sawyer to activate the nuclear football. Sawyer refuses, and tries to convince Walker that his son did not die in vain, and that the peace treaty was a form of victory. When Walker threatens to kill Emily again, the alarms and sprinklers are activated by Cale setting fire to the Lincoln Bedroom. In the chaos, Tyler tries to escape but encounters the tunnel gate bomb. When he tries to deactivate it, it detonates instead, killing him. Killick finds Cale and tries to kill him, but is ambushed by Donnie Smith, the White House tour guide (Nicolas Wright), who bludgeons Killick to death with a clock. After freeing the hostages and entrusting Donnie to get them out safely, Cale battles Stenz in a fistfight which spills into the press conference room. The fight ends when Cale ultimately kills Stenz with a grenade belt. Using the explosion to catch him off guard, Sawyer attacks a distracted Walker, but Walker gains the upper hand and forces Sawyer to activate the football before apparently shooting him dead. Using updated launch codes from an anonymous source, Walker targets various cities in Iran, but before he can initiate the launch, Cale smashes through the wall of the Oval Office with a Humvee, and kills Walker with the Humvee's minigun. Cale warns Emily of the air strike, and she takes a presidential flag and waves it on the front lawn, prompting the pilots to call off the attack. Meanwhile, Sawyer reveals himself to be alive since the bullet that hit him hit a pocket watch his wife (Garcelle Beauvais) had given him. Finnerty calls them to reveal that the mercenaries were not hired by Walker, and that there is another person behind the attack. Cale realizes who it is and asks Sawyer for his help in exposing the person.

Later, Finnerty arrives at the White House with Raphelson. When Cale tells them Sawyer was killed, Raphelson then orders troops to be placed back into the Middle East, which would go against Sawyer's peace treaty. Cale then reveals Raphelson had conspired with Walker to orchestrate the attack because of Raphelson's opposition to Sawyer's treaty and then proves it by having Finnerty call the call-back number on Walker's pager, which was the source of the updated launch codes. Sawyer arrives and has Raphelson taken into custody, treating his taking of the Presidency as a coup d'tat. Sawyer then officially offers Cale a job in the Secret Service and takes him and Emily on an aerial tour of Washington, D.C. on his way to the hospital. Realizing an increased need for peace due to the days events, Russia, Iran, China, and other Middle Eastern and Asian countries agree to sign Sawyer's peace treaty.

Cast

• Channing Tatum as John Cale, a United States Capitol Police officer.
• Jamie Foxx as James W. Sawyer, the President of the United States.
• Maggie Gyllenhaal as Carol Finnerty, a Secret Service agent.
• Jason Clarke as Emil Stenz, a disavowed ex-Delta Force operative and the leader of the mercenaries that invade the White House.
• Richard Jenkins as Eli Raphelson, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
• Joey King as Emily Cale, the daughter of John Cale.
• James Woods as Martin Walker, the Head of the Presidential Detail and the mastermind of the White House takeover.
• Nicolas Wright as Donnie Smith, the White House Tour Guide.
• Jimmi Simpson as Skip Tyler, a computer hacker.
• Michael Murphy as Alvin Hammond, the Vice President of the United States.
• Rachelle Lefevre as Melanie, the ex-wife of John Cale.
• Lance Reddick as General Caulfield, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• Matt Craven as Kellerman, a Capitol Police officer.
• Jake Weber as Ted Hope, a Secret Service agent.
• Peter Jacobson as Wallace, Chief of Staff of the Vice President.
• Barbara Williams as Muriel Walker, Martin Walker's wife.
• Kevin Rankin as Carl Killick, a far right militant and one of Stenz's mercenaries.
• Anthony Lemke as Captain Hutton, an analyst in the Pentagon.
• Vincent Leclerc as Ryan Todd, a Secret Service agent.
• Garcelle Beauvais as Alison Sawyer, the First Lady of the United States.
• Kyle Gatehouse as Conrad Cern, a far right white supremacist and one of Stenz's mercenaries.
• Falk Hentschel as Motts, one of Stenz's mercenaries.
• Jackie Geary as Jenna, assistant to the Vice President.

Production

White House Down is directed by Roland Emmerich and based on a screenplay by James Vanderbilt, who is also one of the film's producers. Sony Pictures purchased Vanderbilt's spec script in March 2012 for , in what The Hollywood Reporter called "one of the biggest spec sales in quite a while". The journal said the script was similar "tonally and thematically" to the films Die Hard and Air Force One. In the following April, Sony hired Roland Emmerich as director. Emmerich began filming in July 2012 at the La Cit Du Cinma in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Cinematographer Anna Foerster shot the film with Arri Alexa Plus digital cameras.

In 2012, Sony competed with Millennium Films, who were producing Olympus Has Fallen (also about a takeover of the White House) to complete casting and to begin filming.

Release

White House Down was originally scheduled for a November 1, 2013 release, but was moved up to a June 28, 2013 release.

Home media

White House Down was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on November 5, 2013.

Reception

Critical response

White House Down has received mixed reviews from mainstream critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 50% based on 176 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.4/10 and the site's consensus states: "White House Down benefits from the leads' chemistry, but director Roland Emmerich smothers the film with narrative clichs and choppily edited action." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the film received an average score of 52 based on 43 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Roth Cornet of IGN gives it a 6.5/10, concluding: "White House Down is a pretty silly rehashing of previously tread action movie territory, but if you're willing to laugh along with (or even at) it, it can be a highly entertaining experience."

Andrew Chan of the Film Critics Circle of Australia writes, "I am not entirely sure, whether I should be happy or sad that I laughed when someone got shot or bomb, but such is the manner of how the film is played out. Therefore, I prefer Olympus for this one."

Box office

On its first weekend in the U.S., the film disappointed and came in at number 4 at the box office. It earned $24,852,258, slightly ahead of Man of Steel, but less than March's similarly themed Olympus Has Fallen ($30.4 M). On its third weekend, the film made $20.7 million. The film grossed $73,103,784 in the United States, plus $132,262,953 internationally for a combined gross of $205,366,737.

In October 2013, Sony announced it lost $197 million for June, July, and August 2013, and largely blamed "the box office flop of the movie White House Down as a key reason for the weakness".

See also

• Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

Notes and references