Having just watched Olympus Has Fallen, I decided to watch its competitor. The events are surprisingly similar - not only do we have another president held hostage in the White House, we have a Speaker of the House become President. However, this one is extremely political. Whereas I did not know the party affiliation of the characters in Olympus, that is not the case here. President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) is a thinly veiled Barack Obama. Really, the guy wants to pull troops out of the Middle East and is having high level talks with Iran! The Speaker of the House is a wicked evil traitor who is in the pocket of the military industrial complex; his first order of business is to keep US troops in the Middle East. Of course, President Sawyer's plan to withdraw all US forces from the Middle East is declared a success in the film's epilogue, with both Iran and Israel jumping eagerly at the opportunity. All you need to do is give peace a chance.
Thanks to high-level traitors in the government, this White House take-over comes across as less ludicrous. Agent Walker (James Woods), head of the Secret Service in the White House, would have the best chance of sneaking a special ops team into the White House. Such a command position allowed him to undermine a proper response - misdirecting responders - so long as he was still viewed as loyal. However, it seems highly unlikely that a man whose son was killed on an operation ordered by the president would retain that position.
The action was great and it was funny to see the buddy cop vibe between the president and John Cale (Channing Tatum). There was a surprising amount of comedy in the movie. The President switching to sneakers in the residence, a villain putting a call on hold, the Vice President's aide hanging up on the president's call, and even the White House Tour Guide was funny: "Tour's over." If not for the overt political message, I'd have liked this film a lot more.
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