A humbling $26 million take has landed the recently released Sony film, “White House Down,” in fourth place for the weekend’s box office.
The movie’s underachieving status is perhaps an indication that the public is not currently in sync with those in Hollywood who subscribe to a liberal agenda and who tangentially pledge allegiance to the current administration.
With a $150 million budget and A-list cast, rather than being the enjoyable Fourth of July blockbuster that the studio had intended, “White House Down” turns out to be an infantile far-left fantasy dressed up as a string of “Die Hard”-style action sequences.
Sony Pictures and director Roland Emmerich have put together a film with a story line that could easily have been penned by any number of the left-leaning hosts that occupy the MSNBC cable television studios.
The lack of originality in the film is jarring, considering it was only a few short months ago that another “Die Hard” replica, “Olympus Has Fallen,” made its debut, featuring a similarly politically rolfed plot. The filmmakers in “Olympus,” though, at least appeared to make an effort to stay within the margins of believability by having their White House-seizing villains hail from North Korea.
In contrast, “White House Down” creators have fashioned their terrorists to conform to politically charged caricatures of domestic right-winged activists, who devise a plot to thwart the world peace plans of an altruistic president.
The premise involves a domestic terrorist group, comprised of mercenaries, neocons, and tea party clones, which carries out a paramilitary attack on the White House. The villains are prompted to engage in the nefarious activity because they disagree with the president’s plan to remove all U.S. military from the Middle East.
Jamie Foxx plays the role of the U.S. president whose ambition is to rid the world of terrorism.
It turns out that the elimination of terrorist activity is an easy task for liberal Hollywood writers. According to the “White House Down” premise, poverty is the real reason that the terrorism came into being, economic hardship being the catalyst for the mayhem that has been plaguing the globe.
With this line of reasoning, screenwriters have the troops being ejected from the Middle East and additionally have a comprehensive peace treaty being signed into existence with Iran. The money that is saved in the process will be used to eradicate the pesky poverty problem, thereby eliminating the root cause of terrorism and granting the sterling U.S. president superhero status.
When the onscreen terrorists begin their attack, Channing Tatum’s character, a Capitol Police officer, happens to be touring the facility with his daughter. The president is able to escape from the bad guys and ends up joining Tatum’s character in his rescue efforts, ultimately saving the whole world from the malevolent scheming of the angry right.
Foxx’s character is no doubt intended to have folks substitute in, media-wise, our current commander in chief. The movie president is an individual of African-American descent, who is a cool, nicotine craving, basketball playing, Lincoln loving figure.
His peace plan is also designed to put people back to work by enlisting them in infrastructure projects. Annoyingly, the only thing stopping him from achieving the societal nirvana that he envisions is an opposing political party and a number of conniving conservatives who are working together with what the film identifies as “the military industrial complex.”
Still, the president is not averse to using guns and even a rocket-launcher in his peace-seeking efforts. At one point in the film, he is able to escape death, thanks to a pocket watch that Honest Abe had fortuitously handed down to him.
The mastermind of the domestic terrorist activity is eventually revealed to be the leader of the opposition party, a Boehner-like character who actually harbors presidential aspirations of his own and is willing to use any means to achieve his goal.
Once the villains are defeated, the president is able to usher in world peace.
Unfortunately, what he is unlikely able to do is to stop the word of mouth on this agenda-ridden flick.
James Hirsen, J.D., M.A., in media psychology, is a New York Times best-selling author, media analyst, and law professor. Visit Newsmax.TV Hollywood. Read more reports from James Hirsen — Click Here Now.
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