DIE HARDER in the White House with a Vengeance.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN (released June 2013) was sold as the “comedic” version of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (March 2013). Is that why we’re laughing AT it? Not that we can even differentiate them; both are the same level of serious, and the same height of stupidity. With the exact same outcome – America wins! Yay! Because – ‘MURRICA!

The White House is taken by domestic terrorists and John McClane is there to– I mean Gerard Butler is there to—I mean, Channing McTatum is there to be Gerard McClane to– I mean – ‘MURRICA!

They even dress Channing in the Bruce Willis Sweaty McT-shirt to leave no doubt. He’s protecting President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx, doing his best Obama – he’s sexy, young, fit, virile; he’s a fighter who can leap elevator shafts with the best McClanes – he’s even chewing Nicorette gum!) But wait! There is so much clichéd backstory here, I suspect screenwriter James Vanderbilt (THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN) and director Roland Emmerich (2012) copied and pasted it out of the LETHAL WEAPON Action Movie Handbook: precocious daughter, divorced parents, daughter calls father by his name instead of daddy, hero wants to be secret service but fails test, only to save Pres in real life, disenfranchised white guy villains, led by ideological villain who cares nothing for money, but makes it look like he does, Pretty Orange Explosions, bad guys no aim, army no use, media no brains – somebody call Jerry Bruckheimer!

Channing Tatum is John Cale (his name even sounds like “John McClane”!), guardian agent to the Speaker of the House (Richard Jenkins, yay!), but he’s applying to be the Big Man’s boy, interviewing with agent head Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal, so sensual I don’t think I can hold an intelligent conversation with her; I mean, everything she says is in that lilt that subtexts, “Will you lay on top of me naked?”).

James Woods is the disgruntled Chief of Staff who lost a boy in the president’s war and is taking revenge on American values by recruiting bad guys from Dissenters R Us (featuring Jimmi Simpson, Jason Clarke, and Kevin Rankin, who’s cheesing his best Bill Paxton). Finnerty raises the point that it is too easy for an insurrectionist to recruit sympathetic anarchistic, treasonous felons when the White House puts them all in one black list. Something to think about, Secret Service.

The dreamy eyes get me every time…

Now what drives Cale to aid the president? When the thugs start taking hostages and blowing things up, shouldn’t he retreat to protect the Speaker? Not today, as he’s on a White House Tour with his precocious 11-year-old daughter Emily (Joey King, who looks oddly like swimmer Ryan Lochte), and she is separated from him when the Pretty Orange Explosions start. Thus, after the president accidentally falls under Cale’s care, he still can’t leave – Not Without his Daughter!

Doesn’t anyone ever notice thugs skulking around in jumpsuits with sinister expressions on their faces? During the White House tour, Obvious Thugs In Jumpsuits are walking past Ryan Lochte and the nerdy tour guide and opening doors that should probably be locked and setting timers and hacking computers… so much for the whoop-de-doo security system. A $4.50 lock on some of those doors would help. And has every action movie in the world not alerted the White House to the fact that every maintenance man in a jumpsuit is a treasonous infiltrator? Just shoot on sight, okay?

Cale takes an interview while he’s there, with Finnerty reading Cale’s laundry list of accomplishments, even though his resumé does not meet White House standards. Why is she even talking to him? Simply to let the audience know his “heroic” background: “…three tours of Afghanistan, rescued a guy from a burning Humvee”—give it a rest! He already knows! Why are you telling HIM? I already had my expositional resumé bullshit stew for breakfast!

When the shooting starts, not one of those hundreds of trained White House agents can avoid the bullets of the thugs. The White House is brought down – including the professional snipers on the roof – in less than 5 minutes. But they can’t shoot Cale – no! – because he uses the John McClane method of diving for cover in slow motion. Movie is reasonable viewing up to this point, even with the overzealousness of the daughter who annoyingly knows more about political issues than the last two presidential candidates combined. After the White House is overrun, it becomes a drone of beatings, shootings, explosions, and cliché payoffs, such as: Cale missed his daughter’s school talent show, which featured her flag-waving (Cale: “Is that a talent?”); cue end scene with daughter waving a flag to stave off the fighter jets about to blow the White House. Single patriotic tear.

Payoffs like President telling Cale he needs to make “one great sacrifice” in his career; cue villain threatening to kill Cale’s daughter and President offering himself instead of Cale! Still, does anyone believe the gun to Emily’s head will go off, spraying brain matter over the Oval Office curtains?

The Vice President (Michael Murphy) orders three Black Hawk helicopters to fly in low and kick some ass; manned with Seal Team 6 – you know, those fictional military superguys that only appear when a political situation calls for the president not to take direct blame for murder. Leads to some great closeup shots of helicopters being ass-kicked and exploding.

This movie really makes us aware of the vast number of “nuclear footballs”! (Those suitcases with the nuclear launch codes.) When the President is considered compromised, suddenly the guys behind the VP bring one out; when the VP is shot down, suddenly out walks another one behind the Speaker. I mean, how many of these things are there? And how can I get my hands on one?

WHITE HOUSE DOWN inadvertently advocates for a fit, young president. Remember when kings and leaders had to be the toughest warriors in their clans? If a situation this intense were to befall the White House, we can truly imagine athlete Obama in this role kicking ass and taking names. Whom we cannot imagine being put through these paces, however, is duplicitous McCain, or shifty Hillary, or even that turnip Trump, all in their 70s, all likely to break hips or die of heart attacks.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN runs the gamut of clichés down to its conclusion, including the trigger-happy Bill Paxton never shooting anyone who is right in front of him, and a bullet being stopped by a gold watch. Single idiotic tear. By putting all the gags in one trailer, WHITE HOUSE DOWN sought to pull in all those who thought OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN was too dark. But it’s the same tone, and it’s the same treacle outcome, because – ‘MURRICA.

END

Homo superior, Bromo superior.

How annoyed am I? Pretty damn annoyed! Annoyed that this is such a fantastic movie. Based on such a fantastic lie!

To have the brass balls to call your movie X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (implying the team featured in Marvel Comics X-Men #1, published 1963) and then to cram your movie with second class X-Men is the height of Hollywood arrogance. Everyone this side of the dinosaurs knows the very first X-Men were Professor X, Cyclops, Angel, Beast, Iceman and Marvel Girl.

Instead, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is populated by a clutch of neophytes created a few years after the original crimefighting clan donned flamboyant x-themed duds and clobbered supervillains. (Who said THAT was okay?) Professor X is here, as is Beast, but then there’s Mystique, Havok, Banshee, Token Black Guy, and Angel reimagined as an annoying ugly black woman.

Of the villains, Magneto is here (as he should be, but only because he was fleshed out so archly by Ian McKellen), with a cast of second-stringers who came into existence sometimes decades after the actual first class of X-Men: Azazel, Emma Frost, Riptide and Sebastian Shaw.

Magnepoffy

And slap me on the pedantic bone for saying so, but the movie treads that dangerous mire of messing with X-Men canon at such a grassroots level that X-fans less equable than myself might find cause to psionically heart-spike all the filmmakers and Marvel Corp who conspired to annoy them this much.So X-MEN: FIRST CLASS has no right to be so damn good!

Remove the movie from its source material and FIRST CLASS is a very enjoyable origin tale, smartly depicting how the – snigger – “first” X-Men came to wear such flamboyant matching blouses. But being an origin tale, we must necessarily put up with scene after scene of discovering, honing and training ultra-human powers, and specious explanations on how these wunderkinds came to possess them (the word “mutant” thrown around like cheap wine at a bachelor party, with no comprehension of what molecular mutation really is, the word merely a McGuffin that denotes “super powers” that regular homo sapiens don’t possess). They are Nietzsche’s Übermensch writ large. In canary yellow magic marker.

Though FIRST CLASS is epic in scope, with creamy chicks and dreamy guys glutting the colorful foreground blamfest, the heart of the tale is the deep friendship and fragile alliance between homo superiors, Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Bound in brotherhood by mutant blood, yet on different moral trajectories, their relationship is not childish good-vs-evil, hero-vs-villain, it is gray complexity; their compelling tête à tête is a nuanced power struggle over two conflicting ideas – that of homo sapiens being passive allies or active foes.

We meet them as young boys in 1944, Xavier as a rich kid with telepathic prowess, and Lehnsherr in a German prison camp with the mental power over metal, whose mother is killed by none other than Nazi Kevin Bacon (less than six degrees to Hitler at the time).

Jump cut to 1962, where we catch up with both young men, now with powers beyond imagining. And using them in diametrically opposing ways: Lehnsherr scouring the globe, torturing old war criminals hiding in society, in the quest to find his Nazi mother-killer Sebastian Shaw (Bacon, whose mutant power keeps him looking young and footloose); while Xavier uses his mind powers to become a professor of genetics and to pick up chicks.

Lehnsherr and Xavier meet in a spectacular action sequence, which leads to their employment by the CIA as unofficial helper bears. Lehnsherr accedes to the uneasy alliance because Shaw is the CIA’s target, plotting to pit Russia against the USA (Rade Sherbedgia naturally making an appearance as a furry-faced Russkie), which cutely intertwines the Cuban Missile Crisis with the fates of our mutants. Xavier wants to turn Shaw to the Good Side of the X-Force, while Lehnsherr just wants revenge.

Xavier and Lehnsherr recruit mutants to aid their quest: Xavier’s adopted sister is blue-skinned shapeshifter Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence, whom we suspect craves some kind of foursome with Xavier, Lehnsherr, Beast and herself – now that’s deviant); they find powerhouse nerd Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult), ginger screamer Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), boy band blaster blondie Havok (Lucas Till), retcon* adaptationist Darwin (Edi Gathegi, playing the Black Dude Who Dies First), and stripper Angel (Zoë Kravitz, who will flap her little fairy wings over to the Dark X-Side, because no one really cares about this made-up character anyway).

Firstly, unless I missed some world-shaking event in the Marvel Universe that turned all white guys with eagle wings into black girls with fairy wings, this reimagining of one of the coolest-looking X-Men is unconscionable! (We even saw an excellent filmic incarnation of Angel in X-MEN: THE LAST STAND! Whose eyes are they trying to pull the wool over?!) Secondly, what’s this ‘spitting acid’ crap? They’ve given Angel an offensive weapon because, let’s face it, being able to fly is cool, but that’s about it.

The x-youngsters give each other “code names” (being CIA operatives, after all), which is a reasonable retroactive justification for their “superhero” monikers. “Professor X” and “Magneto” don’t care too much for theirs.

Oliver Platt is a nameless CIA guy; Rose Byrne is CIA agent and Xavier’s latent love interest Moira MacTaggert; Matt Craven is CIA Director; rugged Michael Ironside is a Naval Captain.

When I heard this X-Men prequel was being made, my first thought was, ‘They can still use Hugh Jackman because Wolverine doesn’t age!’ Sure enough, Xavier and Lehnsherr try to solicit a gruff Logan (Hugh Jackman, still the best there is at what he does – and what he does best is play Wolverine), belly up to a bar, who tells them in his inimitable curt manner to “Fuck off!” before they can introduce themselves. Ageless. And priceless.

FIRST CLASS seems to be two different movies running congruently, both of them enjoyable in their own way – the tone of one, campy and blandly kinetic, the tone of the other, philosophical, powerfully emotional and morally ambiguous. Director/co-writer Matthew Vaughn (KICK-ASS) and writers Bryan Singer, Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz and Jane Goldman artfully allow the sober tone to inform the camp. Like Batman beating up the Joker if he gets outta line.

In the sober camp are McAvoy and Fassbender. Their intense, exotic drama/bromance is tempered by everyone else funning it up in that other, more conventional blamfest with The Bacon leading the pack as Hellfire Club honcho, Shaw. He is clearly the most experienced actor in the ‘camp’ camp and he’s gonna add as much ham and cheese to his Bacon as he damn well pleases. He does have the support of excellent Jason Flemyng (as devil-red teleporter Azazel, who doesn’t get to do much besides disappear and appear in tasty burgundy bamfs, like his future blue-skinned spawn, Nightcrawler).

Shaw’s other henchies include Riptide (Álex González, with the power to create tornadoes, but apparently with an agent powerless to haggle for even one line of dialogue), and Emma Frost (January Jones, with the power to turn to diamond, read minds, and distract men with her giant jugaloos).

Though every actor commits to their comicbook roles, Fassbender brings a conviction to his metal-bending madboy that is awe-inspiring. His power over everything ferrous is ferociously cool, and the climactic scene with a submarine and hundreds of missiles is an exhilarating display of man-sexiness that ensures he will be neck deep in puss for the rest of his life. Of all the muties, his is the power that we most wish we had. Dare I say he is a ‘magnetic’ presence? Ha! Onward…

Amongst the tiresome, mildly humorous scenes of the x-naifs honing their chops, Lehnsherr and Xavier share the film’s mightiest and most poignant moment: when Lehnsherr fails to mentally move a giant radio telescope dish, Xavier asks permission to aid Lehnsherr by probing his mind, whereupon he unlocks a memory of Lehnsherr’s dead mother. A single tear from Fassbender’s closed eyes, a single tear from McAvoy’s. And a single tear from mine. Oh, X-God! Where do these people go to find these emotions?! Sharing such a moment illustrates how deep would run the scar when their friendship is ultimately riven. (Bromantically, the camera stays tight above their waistlines; lucky they were both wearing tracksuit pants, or the strain would have been unbearable…)

While the CIA holds Emma Frost without charging her, disregarding her rights to a lawyer and fair trial, their credo is: “Security is more important than liberty.” When a rational person views this abuse of power, they realize it’s a satire on American “values,” but unfortunately, Republicans think it merely corroborates their criminal ideology.

Speaking of criminal ideology: the American and Russian navies. After the Cuban Missile Crisis is averted through mutant intervention (and all this time we thought it was Kennedy’s tactful politicking), both the Soviets and U.S. warships turn their attention to the common enemy – the mutants who intervened. Thus does Lehnsherr, now embracing his code name Magneto, displace his hatred of “people just taking orders” – from WWII Nazis to the modern military.

I sympathize with and commend the writers who were commissioned to plug in all the canon and arrive at a point prior to the first X-MEN film (2000): very satisfying depictions of how Professor X ends up in a wheelchair, of his arc from using his talents as a roaring puker to finding a nobler purpose, how Mystique (“Mutant and Proud”) chooses Magneto over Xavier, how Xavier’s and Lehnsherr’s dissolution birthed internecine x-struggles, and how Magneto came to wear such a snazzy helmet.

But come on, guys: with 33 subsidiary directors (second directors, assistants to the seconds, second directors to the second assistant directors, etc.) no one thought to make Beast say at least once, “Oh, my stars and garters!”

I’ve never known what that means, but boy, it sure sounds deviant.

END