The movie opens with President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) losing his wife in a fatal car crash en route to a holiday party. The Secret Service agent who saved his life is Mike Banning (Gerald Butler), who is reassigned to the US Treasury to help the President move on from the accident.
Then comes the action. Through an air raid over all of Washington DC, a large military plane flies low, shooting at will, while a group of North Korean rebels attack from the ground. In 13 minutes (the leader so proudly brags), the White House is completely overtaken, while the President finds himself captive in his own bunker, along with the two other government officials who hold the unique codes to launch every nuclear weapon in the country. We are reminded that the codes can only be changed from within this bunker, and the acting President, the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman) must choose between withdrawing troops from Korea or losing the President. Banning ends up as the only survivor of the attack still in the White House, and with a seemingly unlimited amount of ammo and guns from the piles of corpses nearby, he launches a one-man assault against the terrorists.
As a film, the movie is dumb fun, nothing you should spend too much thought on. The action sequences are quick-cut and surprisingly violent, while Butler carries the film in one of his better roles. Eckhart is fine in his role as a pushover President who buckles under pressure, even in the face of total US annihilation. Freeman, on the other hand, is level-headed and confident - perhaps because he's used to the role of President, especially in the face of national emergency.
Would events play out like this in real life? I would hope not. I doubt a group of terrorists would so easily overpower one of the most heavily-guarded places on Earth with mere machine guns. I doubted the ease with which one character becomes a traitor (with no clear motive, nonetheless). I doubt government officials would so easily buckle under pressure to divulge life-threatening information. That's not to say I didn't like the film, or its performances. A movie lives or dies on its villain, and Rick Yune as Kang, the leader of the rebels, is quietly powerful and sharp as an arrow.
For an action flick, you could pick a much worse movie. Perhaps the film got too enamored with its own need for destruction, or maybe it became a bit too unbelievable even for itself. One thing we still know for sure: the US government will never negotiate with terrorists (unless that guy has you in a tight spot, of course).
(Awards potential: Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing)
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