What about the slick suits and German accents?

White House Down
English (U/A) ¬¬¬½
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jason Clarke

A well-trained paramilitary force has seized a valuable multi-storey building, taken hostages, sealed off its perimeter, deployed heavy weapons to ward off counterassaults from law enforcement, and demanded money. Sounds familiar?

No, it is not Die Hard. But if the scenes in Roland Emmerich’s new film, White House Down, evoke strong feelings of déjà vu for the 1989 Bruce Willis classic, then it should come as no surprise to realise that Emmerich’s creation retreads the familiar, if hallowed ground of its distant predecessor, right down the elevator scene, low-flying assault helicopters, the gifted hacker with hazy morals, Beethoven in the background, a vulnerable hostage and vague sentiments of revenge thrown in for good measure.

In White House Down, US President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx), who oozes of Barack Obama, has proposed a controversial peace with the Middle East and Iran by removing all US forces from the region. Meantime, John Cale (Channing Tatum), an unremarkable US Capitol Police officer, who dreams of joining the Secret Service, is doing his best to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Emily (Joey King). Emily is obsessed with Washington politics, and Cale hopes to make amends by taking her on a tour of the White House. His timing could have been better.

The House is infiltrated by ex-US Army mercenaries, led by Emil Stenz (Jason Clarke) and gradually overrun — setting the stage for a bombastic, adrenaline-fuelled, shoot-from-the-hip flick which promises all the entertainment in the world and often delivers, despite its serious lack of imagination.

Emmerich’s trademark strength has always been to take hackneyed themes and make them compelling for mass consumption.

At the heart of the story is that everyman hero — that literary construct best defined in modern cinema by Bruce Willis’s John McClane, who first battled gun-toting, well-suited East German profiteers in the orginal Die Hard. In White House Down, as Stenz (no, he does not speak German) and his men gain complete control of the White House, enter Channing Tatum’s John Cale (there’s that feeling of déjà vu again) — the intended fly in the ointment, the monkey with the wrench, who quickly strips down to a white, sweat-stained tank top, once worn by Mr Willis’ John McClane, 25 years ago.

But Mr Tatum is no Bruce Willis. He may have been cast to portray the ordinary joe, but he has none of Mr Willis’ everyman guile or wit. Often, the fires raging around him seem to have more personality and charm. But unlike John McClane, he has kept his shoes on, and with President Sawyer in tow, takes the audience on a revised tour of all the best sequences from the first three Die Hard films.

White House Down may be the great summer blockbuster of the year. Jamie Foxx certainly steals the show as President Sawyer, but just don’t expect too much if you are a fan of action movies. You would have seen it all before.