*Editor’s Note: This series will return to Sunday. Mojeaux had to deal with real life. She will return to Fridays*

Genre – Thriller
Movie Total Runtime – 1 Hour 48 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes

I don’t remember where I got this movie. I think that means it was probably a Blockbuster Bargain Bin acquisition. We start with news footage of Reagan being shot by Hinkley then some dude waking up to a 4am alarm to start working out. Credits roll over establishing shots of him walking through DC. There are a lot of names I haven’t heard in a long time. What year was this? IMDB says 2006. Our protagonist arrives at a CGI white house where we get a panning shot of the rooftop snipers. Bald guy settled a bet with Protagonist. DEI Hire claims to have just gotten back from anti-terror training. The President is such a generic looking guy I can’t pick him out of the cast.

So, Protagonist is part of the protective detail, but I’m unsure if he’s that of the President or the First Lady. Still not a lot of dialog, just exposition by montage as they prepare for a visit to a local school. The motorcade snarls traffic.

New Girl arrives at the office of Fake Tough Guy generic white dude who rattles off her informed qualifications before asserting that ‘resumes don’t mean a thing on the street’. So why did you hire her based off that resume? This eyerolling line is why I dubbed him Fake Tough Guy.

I’m ten minutes in, the movie has thrown a shitload of characters at me, and I can’t tell who’s supposed to be relevant except Protagonist, since he’s played by the biggest name on the film at the time, and we’ve followed him for most of those ten minutes. Another character’s name stuck only because it was that of someone who used to report to me at work. Not going to say which one. This firehose of introductions makes me ambivalent towards all of the characters. Can we get a full cast wipe and a tale about an agent who investigates counterfeit money? The protective detail is boring.

We get a song from the diversity children’s chorus as the president does a photo op in the school, then they go back to the White House. Given that the Protagonist is riding with the First Lady on her way to the beach house, I guess we know which detail he’s with.

Thirteen minutes in we get something happening that looks like a plot as someone named Charlie gets stealth killed by Not Simon Pegg. Charlie was not established before this, nor was Not Simon. We go back to New Girl and Fake Tough Guy as they review the bevy of threats recieved by the president from the general public. All presidents get a lot, and they have to take them seriously, even if it’s mostly blowhards exercising their First Amendment rights. I know the court says threats aren’t protected speech, but lacking immediecy of effect, it’s a whole lot of noise.

Fake Tough Guy and New Girl are dispatched to the murder scene. And then it cuts away to the motorcade out to the beach house, then back to the murder. Fake Tough Guy is needlessly belligerant with the local police while contaminating evidence by handling it on the scene. Also, he finds the .45 shell casing practically under the corpse. From the position Not Simon was standing, and the angle of ejection, his casings should be out in the lawn. There was no way for them to end up almost under the corpse. We’re still cutting to the beach house as if the editor is allergic to long scenes. Fake Tough Guy continues to get his ballistic science wrong in blathering about depth of penetration into wood to ascertain that Not Simon used a silencer. As this is Hollywood, it is a Silencer, taking away 100% of the gunshot noises. I would have read that impact as “through and through, losing most of the velocity in the body.” Especially since we have a great view of the two wounds on the dead guy, matching the two shots fired. We have one through the sternum and spine, and one through the scapula. Those bullets would have been slowed more by the bone and body tissue than reduced velocity for improved noise cancellation.

Fake Tough Guy blusters and reduces my opinion of him and New Girl even further. smug, condescending pieces of shit.

Back at the beach house we get signs of an extramarital affair between Designated Protagonist and the First Lady, and a continuity gaffe that almost made me laugh. Their dialog was delivered in the typical cut between two shots to show the speaking actor’s face. Between these two, the relative heights of the two change. In one angle, she clearly is only as tall as his eyebrows. In the other, they are nose to nose. And no, Designated Protagonist is not bopping up and down between camera cuts. They then start kissing before he remembers to close the last curtain before they can engage further in their tryst.

I don’t like any of these characters.

Designated Protagonist gets informed of Charlie’s murder. and we cut back to Fake Tough Guy interrogating questioning the widow. Fake Tough Guy and Designated Protagonist get into a pointless argument about their bad blood. Of course the editor remains allergic to complete scenes, so we get a snippet of Designated Protagonist talking to some woman we’ve not been introduced to making a right muddied mess of the exposition. Please. Fire the editor, get someone who can string together more than thirty seconds in a go.

Some snitch tells Designated Protagonist that there’s an insider in on a plot to assassinate the president. Quarter of the way into the movie and I am not invested. It’s going to be an uphill battle to get me back. So far, the short cuts and unlikable characters makes that unlikely. They do implement randomized decision making for choice between routes to confound the ability of a solitary insider to act. Meanwhile someone sends compromising pictures to Designated Protagonist showing his tryst with the First Lady, along with a note demanding a meeting. But, the blackmailer ghosts him.

We get the first almost reasonable sequence where Designated Protagonist, Hispanic Thug, and Generic Glowy have a mutual tailing until the FBI nabs Designated Protagonist at an airport. Both of the others turn out to be Feds too. Why the FBI was staking out the meeting is not elaborated on. The editor’s aversion to letting a scene play out once again gets in the way of storytelling. The sudden transitions keep interrupting any chance at immersion.

Not Simon takes out another agent and gets into a gunfight with Designated Protagonist. Credit in that it’s not an action scene and closer to realistic. I think Not Simon’s target was Designated Protagonist, but the other agent disrupted the plan. Backup arrives as Not Simon’s marksmanship powers fail against Designated Protagonist. Since it’s in a mall, Not Simon changes his appearance by shoplifting and slips away in the crowd before the area gets locked down. Meanwhile someone with a MANPADS shoots down the helicopter that would have been Marine One had the President been on it. The in-movie news calls it Marine One, but that call sign only applies when he is on board. It is confirmed he was not there.

Not Simon had fifteen seconds with co-conspirators, most of the time focused on the news report. Fake Tough Guy informs Designated Protagonist that he’s the main suspect because he failed the pseudoscientific claptrap due to the affair. We finally get told that the FBI was casing the meetup spot because of some cartel related connection. Wrong conclusions are drawn. I still don’t care. It does lead to Designate Protagonist incriminating himself by assaulting officers and fleeing the scene.

Dumbass.

Assault on a federal agent is a felony. And hitting one with a freezer door is most definately an assault. Doesn’t matter if you save the day, you’re now a felon, and your career is over. He further incriminates himself by sneaking into a restaurant where a security detail has been deployed to talk to the First Lady. This nets him nothing as he goes off to try to find the snitch. He then commits another felony – Grand Theft Auto – to help in that process. Of course, the snitch is dead by the time Designated Protagonist catches up to him. Fake Tough Guy shoots Deisgnated Protagonist in the vest, but fails to follow through, resulting in Designated Protagonist commiting another felony by stealing a boat. The editor has finally been fired, as the scenes are now lasting long enough to make sense.

Not sure how, but Designated Protagonist finds the safe house used by Not Simon and friends and commits felony murder by breaking and entering then shooting the presumptive resident in a gun battle. We’re up to two counts of assault on a federal agent, three of felony evasion, grand theft auto, using a vehicle without permission, unauthorized use of a communications device, wiretapping, breaking and entering and now felony murder. If you’re counting on a pardon – a lot of these are state crimes and a greateful president can’t get you out of them, man.

He ransacks the safehouse uncovering a collection of fake passports, cash and guns. He calls it in but the co-conspirators cleared it out before the proper authorities arrive. The First Lady tells Fake Tough Guy about the affair to help Designated Protagonist. But, with all those felonies, it’s too little, too late. But Fake Tough Guy is swayed, since this is fiction. They identify the Mole and we get a scene between him and the co-conspirators to cover motive.

“Generic thriller ending” initiates, and co-conspirators ambush the president, having been forced to move up the schedule. The Mole dies. DEI Hire fails to look up while climbing a stairwell and is taken out from an elevated position. I guess that counterterror training wasn’t as good as it was supposed to be. Not Simon stalks the Designated Protagonist and the President as they try to link back up with the motorcade. New Girl and Fake Tough Guy take him out. Last co-conspirator takes the First Lady hostage for a half second before Designated Protagonist shoots him. No explanation why she even got out of the car in the middle of this situation.

Honestly, Designated Protagonist needs to do time for GTA at least. The felony murder will be hard to prove since the body was never found. Instead, he gets to retire.

I do not recommend this movie. Between the generic thriller plot and the bad editing, it falls short of being servicable.