In the movie ‘White House Down’, a US Capital Officer, John Cale (Channing Tatum) attends a job interview at White House. Just when he thinks his hopes to join the Secret Service are dashed, he is presented with an opportunity to save the White House and the President in it. In the end, you guessed it right, President of United States of America, cannot imagine his Secret Service without him and hires him on the spot.
Action quotient wise the movie delivers and offers all the cliches that goes with a typical hostage/kidnap movie. William Foxx as the President is decent and he pairs up with well with Channing Tatum.
An effort ball is when a fast bowler bends his back and produces something special. It is even more significant when the pitch has nothing to offer.
Om 3D is one big effort ball from Kalyan Ram and his team, on a flat dead story track. While there a few moments and quite a few twists, there is not enough for the audience to say “we were bowled over by the film”.
Touted as ‘the first Indian action movie in 3D’ the movie does devote a majority of the screen time for action episodes. However, some of these action episodes fall flat both because of the lack of novelty and the purpose behind it. The ‘set-piece’ bridge chase and the explosions thereof, would have made more sense if the hero were chasing an international terrorist outfit, instead of resolving a personal vendetta. Too much of a ‘personal’ mission and too many ‘dark’ family twists, do not allow the canvass to be large enough for a full fledged action 3D film.
Kalyan Ram as the seething action hero is adequate, but his ‘Sin City’ kind of narration (though required for leading the audience to necessary twists in the tale) gets on to your nerves after a while. Veteran actor Karthik is the surprise package and it is a great idea to dub his voice by another veteran–Ghantasala Ratnakumar. He holds his fort till the lead scene before the climax, which suddenly reduces his character to a charade.
After a long time the female characters have something to add to the story of the film, and they do justice. Rest of the characters played by senior actors Rao Ramesh, Sampath Raj, Suresh, Sitara etc are just average and do not really lift the film to the net level.
3D technology wise the movie works for the most part and one will have to appreciate the effort of Kalyan Ram and Director Sunil to conceive and execute this risky project. But, why did they decide to risk it on dead pitch instead of an original script like ‘Sahasam’? Hmm…
