A new crop of D.C.-set movies arrived, led by “Olympus Has Fallen.” The president-in jeopardy tick-tock, starring Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler, featured a Sept. No sooner had awards season rolled up the red carpet than the tone radically changed. What was remarkable about last year’s Washington movies was their utter lack of cynicism: The most negative pushback, against “Zero Dark Thirty” and its depiction of torture, accused the filmmakers of not being skeptical enough. There was a time in American cinema when political dramas like “Lincoln,” “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” would have been conceived as indictments of America’s dark side - expressions of deep disillusionment with ruthless lust for power and institutional rot. Clarke also plays a crucial role in “White House Down,” but not as an avatar of America’s troubled legacy of torture - rather, as an unambiguous bad guy who’s not above slapping a cute little girl around or gleefully putting a bullet through George Washington’s forehead. “Zero Dark Thirty” fans might remember that Jason Clarke starred in that film as a CIA interrogator in charge of a brutal detainee program in Afghanistan. Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, was a gripping testament to the agency’s old-fashioned legwork and newfangled data mining, as well as the courage and smarts of Navy SEALs. In “Argo,” director and star Ben Affleck told a little-known story from the 1970s in which CIA operatives were actually the good guys. In “Lincoln,” Spielberg paid tribute not just to the 16th president but also to a Congress that still functioned despite its flagrant flaws. What just a few months ago was reverently portrayed as the repository for American ideals and optimism has now been reduced to rubble and cinders.Īt the Oscars ceremony in February, Washington and its institutions were being celebrated by way of three best-picture nominees (and a surprise appearance from the first lady). which, over two incendiary hours, is vandalized, shot up, bombed and otherwise abused before a climactic set piece in which the executive residence is engulfed in fire. Well, goodbye to all that: With the arrival of the action thriller “White House Down” in theaters Friday, audiences are being invited to witness the promiscuous, unrelenting destruction of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
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It seems like just yesterday that filmgoers were being guided worshipfully through the halls of the White House in “Lincoln,” wherein Steven Spielberg lovingly recreated the lively, crowded, raucously dignified people’s house of 1865 Washington. ‘White House Down’: Fun and profit in blowing up Washington – The Denver Post