ON JUNE 28, a movie will come out about terrorists attacking the White House! It will star Secret Service Agent Channing Tatum, who will have to save President Jamie Foxx! That movie will be called White House Down, and it will be directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day).

This Friday, a movie will come out about terrorists attacking the White House! It stars Secret Service Agent Gerard Butler, who has to save President Aaron Eckhart! This movie is called Olympus Has Fallen, and it is directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day).

Which should you see? That depends on who you like more: Channing Tatum or Gerard Butler. Gerard who? EXACTLY! White House Down will be better, because Channing Tatum is superior to Gerard Butler in every conceivable metric. That said, Gerard Butler tries in Olympus Has Fallen! He does okay.

The best Die Hard movie released so far this year, Olympus Has Fallen kicks into gear when eeevil North Koreans (who must be tired, having just attacked America in that Red Dawn remake nobody cared about) fly a gunship over Washington, DC, and start shooting all of the people and Washington Monuments they can find! Within moments, bullets are tearing holes through American flags and chunks of Washington Monument are crushing tourists. And the White House... well, the White House is fucked. So mopey Secret Service Agent Gerard Butler stops moping and starts shooting, President Eckhart and Obvious Traitor/Secret Service Agent Dylan McDermott huddle in the White House's panic room, and Speaker of the House Morgan Freeman squabbles with General Robert Forster over whether the entire US Army is tougher than a single Gerard Butler. (Spoiler: They aren't.) (Proof: Gerard Butler uses a bust of Abraham Lincoln to smash a bad guy's head in. U-S-A! U-S-A!)

Olympus Has Fallen is crammed with cut-rate CG, casual brutality (Secretary of Defense Melissa Leo gets really beat up), and a bunch of goofy references to Greek mythology (a big gun is called "the Hydra," a nuclear code is called "Cerberus"). As stupid action movies go, it's not great, but it also isn't terrible. It will be better when Channing Tatum is in it.