Spoiler here. A beautiful young woman is found murdered in a bathroom at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (That's the White House.) There is a jurisdictional dispute between the Washington, DC, police force, represented by Wesley Snipes, and the Secret Service, represented by Diane Lane. Before you know it, the pair overcome their natural rivalry and work together. That both are harassed and told to lay off by their superiors is by now a cliché.
Suspicion falls on the President's son. Too bad for the President (Ronnie Cox) because now he's got his jewels in a vice. The North Koreans are holding some American hostages, which the Prez wants to negotiate for. Standing against him and in favor of military force are some of the President's chiefs of staff and his adviser, Alan Alda. It is constantly asked of President Cox how, if he can't protect the people in his own residence, he can possibly protect the country? The words in this question make it sound like an insoluble dilemma, whereas the facts of the matter are probably that, yes, somebody can be slaughtered in the White House and the President can still do a good job of protecting the country, as long as he's not sabotaged by his subordinates. It's a kind of bumper-sticker question that, when examined, makes little sense, but to the appealing simplicity of which, many Americans seem attracted. Surrender is not an option, and all that.
Well, you ask, did the president's kid kill the beauty? It looks bad. The son admits he slept with her an hour before her death, and a condom has been found with his semen and her fingerprints on it. (Yukk.) However, as Snipes and Lane find out, the entire murder was a ploy to get the president to choose between saving his son by resigning or playing out a hand with no cards left in it. The President is only a few minutes away from announcing his resignation when the dynamic duo of Snipes and Lane, having squirmed their way through the White House maze of underground tunnels, show up and shout, "Mister President, your son is innocent and here is the evidence on this secret tape!" Alan Alda was behind the whole thing. He wanted to go in with Special Forces or whatever it took to free the hostages, so he had the woman murdered and the son framed. Informed of this plot, the President, no namby-pamby after all, socks Alda in the jaw and puts him under arrest.
It seems to me that the President himself, having been given information relevant to the murder and deliberately withholding it from the investigators is himself guilty of obstruction of justice, accessory after the fact, first degree broodiness, and parking in a handicapped zone. But no matter. We don't care if Presidents fail in every little observation of the law, as long as they keep their pants zipped. There's an intermediate heavy, a bald guy, whom I find always an irritation. He seems to enjoy being on camera too much. And he has this little shtick that he always does, looking humorless and speaking in a hoarse whisper, and that's that. You want to see what a real heavy can do with his role? Watch anything that John Glover is in.
It's an entertaining and distracting movie as long as you don't think about it too much. Action scenes with shoot outs alternate with a plot development filled with intrigue. But there's not much to distinguish this from a dozen other similar movies, except that this one has to do with a murder in the White House. It's as if somebody, maybe a teen-aged Mickey Rooney, suddenly brightened and said, "Let's have a murder mystery, only this one will be in the White House!"
Suspicion falls on the President's son. Too bad for the President (Ronnie Cox) because now he's got his jewels in a vice. The North Koreans are holding some American hostages, which the Prez wants to negotiate for. Standing against him and in favor of military force are some of the President's chiefs of staff and his adviser, Alan Alda. It is constantly asked of President Cox how, if he can't protect the people in his own residence, he can possibly protect the country? The words in this question make it sound like an insoluble dilemma, whereas the facts of the matter are probably that, yes, somebody can be slaughtered in the White House and the President can still do a good job of protecting the country, as long as he's not sabotaged by his subordinates. It's a kind of bumper-sticker question that, when examined, makes little sense, but to the appealing simplicity of which, many Americans seem attracted. Surrender is not an option, and all that.
Well, you ask, did the president's kid kill the beauty? It looks bad. The son admits he slept with her an hour before her death, and a condom has been found with his semen and her fingerprints on it. (Yukk.) However, as Snipes and Lane find out, the entire murder was a ploy to get the president to choose between saving his son by resigning or playing out a hand with no cards left in it. The President is only a few minutes away from announcing his resignation when the dynamic duo of Snipes and Lane, having squirmed their way through the White House maze of underground tunnels, show up and shout, "Mister President, your son is innocent and here is the evidence on this secret tape!" Alan Alda was behind the whole thing. He wanted to go in with Special Forces or whatever it took to free the hostages, so he had the woman murdered and the son framed. Informed of this plot, the President, no namby-pamby after all, socks Alda in the jaw and puts him under arrest.
It seems to me that the President himself, having been given information relevant to the murder and deliberately withholding it from the investigators is himself guilty of obstruction of justice, accessory after the fact, first degree broodiness, and parking in a handicapped zone. But no matter. We don't care if Presidents fail in every little observation of the law, as long as they keep their pants zipped. There's an intermediate heavy, a bald guy, whom I find always an irritation. He seems to enjoy being on camera too much. And he has this little shtick that he always does, looking humorless and speaking in a hoarse whisper, and that's that. You want to see what a real heavy can do with his role? Watch anything that John Glover is in.
It's an entertaining and distracting movie as long as you don't think about it too much. Action scenes with shoot outs alternate with a plot development filled with intrigue. But there's not much to distinguish this from a dozen other similar movies, except that this one has to do with a murder in the White House. It's as if somebody, maybe a teen-aged Mickey Rooney, suddenly brightened and said, "Let's have a murder mystery, only this one will be in the White House!"