White House Down
Sep. 19th, 2013 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbNot a film, from the trailer, that I'd ever thought to see. But when I read ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mizkit's comments on it, I knew I had to go.
I succeeded in going last night, despite a cold that's turned my faculties to snot and left my tonsils feeling as though they'd been glassed. And for a film with such a premise - paramilitaries take over the White House with the President and other hostages still trapped inside, make demands of a government in constitutional crisis - it is astonishingly good. Intelligently shot, well-acted, with dialogue that's clever and appropriate much more often than it's not, it even manages to pull off a modicum of political intrigue at the same time it's shooting SAMs from the roof of the White House.
It is really pretty damn good. The 11yo political-junkie girl saves the world! Channing Tatum's Muscles and Jamie Foxx do male-bonding things with rocket launchers. Maggie Gyllenhaal is NO ONE'S LOVE INTEREST. The White House tour guide gets a Moment of Awesome. ("Stop. Hurting. My. WHITE HOUSE!") People blow up the symbols of American political hegemony - that's always good. And there's a PSA: MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX is BAD and OWNS A LOT OF POLITICIANS.
Jamie Foxx's President Sawyer is ridiculously young-looking for a president, and full of entirely too much PEACE LOVE INTEGRITY to be in charge of the world's biggest military bully. But as an ideal of the kind of people one could wish held political power? Yeah. I like him. Can we have one, please?
And Maggie Gyllenhaal is NOT FOOLED. That's pretty amazing, too. (Hey, people who are unimaginative enough to remake Star Wars? Age up the characters a bit and cast this one as Leia Organa and Idris Elba as Han Solo. That'd get me in your cinema.)
(Today is day two of the Invasion of the Snotmonsters. We have called up the reserves but remain on the defensive. Tea and blanket supplies are running low.)
mizkit's comments on it, I knew I had to go.I succeeded in going last night, despite a cold that's turned my faculties to snot and left my tonsils feeling as though they'd been glassed. And for a film with such a premise - paramilitaries take over the White House with the President and other hostages still trapped inside, make demands of a government in constitutional crisis - it is astonishingly good. Intelligently shot, well-acted, with dialogue that's clever and appropriate much more often than it's not, it even manages to pull off a modicum of political intrigue at the same time it's shooting SAMs from the roof of the White House.
It is really pretty damn good. The 11yo political-junkie girl saves the world! Channing Tatum's Muscles and Jamie Foxx do male-bonding things with rocket launchers. Maggie Gyllenhaal is NO ONE'S LOVE INTEREST. The White House tour guide gets a Moment of Awesome. ("Stop. Hurting. My. WHITE HOUSE!") People blow up the symbols of American political hegemony - that's always good. And there's a PSA: MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX is BAD and OWNS A LOT OF POLITICIANS.
Jamie Foxx's President Sawyer is ridiculously young-looking for a president, and full of entirely too much PEACE LOVE INTEGRITY to be in charge of the world's biggest military bully. But as an ideal of the kind of people one could wish held political power? Yeah. I like him. Can we have one, please?
And Maggie Gyllenhaal is NOT FOOLED. That's pretty amazing, too. (Hey, people who are unimaginative enough to remake Star Wars? Age up the characters a bit and cast this one as Leia Organa and Idris Elba as Han Solo. That'd get me in your cinema.)
(Today is day two of the Invasion of the Snotmonsters. We have called up the reserves but remain on the defensive. Tea and blanket supplies are running low.)
