White House Down (2013)

3/5

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a terrorist plot to overtake a building is thwarted by a lone off-duty officer behind enemy lines. No, it's not Die Hard. It's White House Down. If you want to put it in a positive light, you can call it an homage or a re-envisioning. If you want to hate on it, you can call it a blatant rip-off. In truth, it probably lies somewhere in between, and it might have worked if Emmerich were a superior director.

The casting is the best part of the movie. Channing Tatum nearly matches Bruce Willis in terms of his on-screen presence and comic timing. (I say this knowing full well that I'll be blasted as a blasphemer or a Tatum fanboy.) But Emmerich takes it one step further by adding Jamie Foxx into the mix, turning it into a buddy movie with an undeniable chemistry between the two leads. It seems like it has all the right ingredients for success, but it just doesn't have that special sauce. Emmerich directs the action just a little too over-the-top. Even I could not suspend my disbelief (and this coming from someone who recently saw Fast & Furious 6). The bad guys are unoriginal and bland, even before comparing them to Die Hard and the inimitable Alan Rickman. The movie sags at around the 2/3 mark and it never manages to pick up the pace after that (even with the unnecessarily ludicrous plot twist at the end). For those of you that don't know, this is basically the exact opposite of what you want in an action movie.

Whereas Die Hard was a classic, White House Down will quickly fade out of our collective memory. That's okay though. It served its purpose as a summer blockbuster popcorn flick. It's entertaining enough for an action movie and I don't feel like I wasted my money. Just don't let the similarities to a much better movie get your hopes up.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2334879/

Night Moves (1975)

4/5

Arthur Penn's Night Moves is a complex, difficult film, but well worth the effort it takes to understand it. The plot starts off following detective Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) as he searches for an aging actress's missing daughter (Melanie Griffith). But this is not your typical thriller/crime film; instead it is an existential character study of a man dedicated to a job he's less than stellar at. Twists, turns, and murder abound, and the reason for it all goes way over our (and Harry's) head. We realize that much of the point of the movie is to show how consistently confused he is, how he never understands what's happening until it's too late. His misery, frustration, and anger at the end are all essential to understanding the character of Harry Moseby and the movie he inhabits. We learn of his motivations, his failures in life, and his small attempts at righting wrongs, and the acting by Hackman is spot-on. It is definitely one of his finest performances and easily one of my favorites.

The technical side is a similarly mixed bag. The dialogue was pristine. It was dark and rough and true; almost as neo-noir as Chinatown. The cinematography and editing were effective and efficient, which I liked, but not stand-out in any way. The music, the costuming, and the sets were all stuck in a bygone era that ages the film severely. And the fact remains that the movie IS confusing and frustrating. It takes a lot of outside effort to appreciate all that it has to offer. Be very wary of watching this movie if you don't know what you're getting into, as it can easily disappoint if it circumvents your expectations. But if you know what you're getting into, I highly recommend this complex character study.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073453/