It's completely unoriginal (it's not even the first 'White House is taken over' movie of 2013!) and derivative the plot is illogical and the action preposterous (how can not one military-trained armed guard get a shot off, even in a surprise siege?). Judged by the merits of serious filmmaking, the legends of the craft, and the movies that go down in history as being powerful, groundbreaking, or novel, this is a by-the-numbers flop of a thriller.

There's absolutely no sex or romance, but there's some language, including a single 'f-k you,' plus 's-t,' 'bitch,' and 'a-hole.' Ultimately it's a crowd-pleasing action movie with a well-intentioned but slightly contradictory message involving both peace and the importance of armed defense. A young girl is frequently in danger and is almost killed on a couple of occasions (which ups the movie's intensity level), and the president seems dead. There are a few hand-to-hand combat scenes and a tense hostage situation in which people (some in high levels of the administration) are executed or wounded. Like Independence Day, which was also directed by Roland Emmerich, there's a lot of violence, but most of it is on a grand scale - explosions, helicopters/planes crashing, and deaths the audience doesn't see too up close.

Parents need to know that White House Down is a patriotic thriller in the vein of Olympus Has Fallen and Independence Day, in which the country is saved by one brave man with a gun - in this case Channing Tatum.

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