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President Down Review
Image Credit: Ben Wilson
Loading...President Down Review
Gail O’Grady– President Kat Collins
Jesse Kove– Agent Jacob Pike
Lorenzo Lamas– Jim Goddard
David Chokachi– Tom Marcus
Gina Vitori– Amelia Collins
G. Anthony Joseph– Dr. Stephen Walsh
Paul Logan– Breacher
Johnny Pacar– Tony Reynes
Crystal St. John– Sophia Bell
Marisa Petroro– Dr. Amara Nabusi
Jason Piette– President Kasparov
(check out the rest of the cast here)
Directed by Nick Lyon
Screenplay by Kenny Zinn and Geoff Meed, based on a story by Kenny Zinn and Geoff Meed
Distributed by Tubi Originals
Rated TV-14 for language and violence
Runtime– 96 minutes
You can watch President Down for free on Tubi here
President Down, a new Tubi Original directed by Nick Lyon, is a fairly well made low-budget action thriller starring Gail O’Grady as the President of the United States, Kat Collins, and Jesse Kove as Jacob Pike, a badass Secret Service agent attempting to protect her at all costs from a nefarious conspiracy that, if it succeeds, could change the world. The movie, produced by the fine folks at The Asylum, drags a bit every now and then, but it tries to make up for those slow moments with shootouts, hand-to-hand brawls, and a spectacular action set piece involving two planes. I also don’t think I’ve ever seen as many head shots in an action thriller of any budget size as there are in President Down (the only sort of movie likely to have more headshots than President Down is a zombie movie).
President Down starts out with O’Grady’s President Collins participating in a press conference with President Kasparov (Jason Piette), the newly elected Russian leader, announcing a new agreement that will allow Russia back into the international community (the previous Russian president essentially made Russia an international pariah). While delivering remarks on the agreement, President Collins suffers a health episode that causes her to collapse. Worried that she might have just had a heart attack on national television (she has a pacemaker), President Collins is taken via ambulance to a nearby hospital. Agent Pike, one of the top Secret Service agents protecting the president, rides inside of the ambulance with the president and uses a device to control traffic lights to get the president to the hospital faster. While in the hospital, Agent Pike receives a strange message on his phone from someone claiming that they have control of President Collins’ pacemaker and that they will use that control to kill her unless she publicly denounces the new Russian president. If anyone tries to save President Collins by removing/altering her pacemaker or generally interfering with this scheme, the message sender claims that they will eventually kill President Collins and launch a nuclear weapon at Russia. The President has twelve hours to comply with these demands.
After getting President Collins to the hospital and stabilized, Agent Pike and other people involved in the president’s security (Jim Goddard, played by the great Lorenzo Lamas, and Tom Marcus, played by David Chokachi, are the top two security people) try to come up with a plan to both keep President Collins safe and alive and to find out who the hell is threatening the president and, essentially, the world. Agent Pike, who is both a badass Secret Service agent and some sort of computer/electronics expert, figures that if they move the president to a room in the hospital that has no Wi-Fi access, they should be able to keep her safe (the president’s pacemaker is confirmed to be a “newer style pacemaker” that can be accessed through Wi-Fi by her doctors and technicians to monitor it and that is likely how the bad guys are going through with their scheme). The president’s doctors then come up with a plan where they will remove the president’s pacemaker and replace it with an older style one that can’t be accessed via Wi-Fi. The problem is the hospital doesn’t have an older style pacemaker in its inventory and will have to obtain one. Will the president’s doctors find an old pacemaker in time and perform the replacement surgery before it’s too late?
While all of that is going on, Agent Pike, Goddard, Marcus, and others start investigating who could be involved in this dastardly scheme. After some computer research and whatnot, it’s surmised that a group called “The Patriot Front” is likely involved. Along with three other agents (I believe one of these agents is known as Breacher and is played by Paul Logan), Agent Pike is charged with heading first to New Orleans to find out how, exactly, The Patriot Front is involved, who else might be working with The Patriot Front, and if The Patriot Front actually has access to a nuclear weapon. Will Agent Pike and his team be able to stop The Patriot Front, or whomever, before it’s too late?
I won’t say any more about the plot of President Down as it does have some nifty surprises spread throughout its 96 minute runtime. I will say that the scheme at the heart of the plot against President Collins is nothing short of diabolical, not to mention dumb as hell. Is a deep seated need for revenge an acceptable enough reason to blow up the world? I don’t think it is, but then I’m not a dipshit terrorist with a relentless need for revenge and delusions of grandeur, so maybe I’m just incapable of understanding the “necessity” of the big plot at the heart of President Down.
The movie’s action moments are decent enough. The shootouts aren’t as loud or as “kinetic” as they perhaps should be for this type of story, but they mostly work and are exciting. I would have liked to see a greater variety of firearms (it’s always a hoot when someone, either a good guy or a bad guy, uses a big handgun that’s ridiculous to use in “real life” but is fun to see in a movie. Or some sort of shotgun that can blow up a car with one round). The hand-to-hand brawls are quick and brutal, especially the ones engaged in by Breacher. The big hooha action sequence involving two planes is absolutely fantastic and works unbelievably well considering the likely size of the movie’s budget. The “big hand magnet” things are very cool.
Now, what’s the deal with all of the head shots? My guess is it’s the best way to show the ruthlessness of the bad guys and that the people they’ve shot are very much dead and not coming back. However, there are two character deaths in the movie that don’t involve headshots that probably should have. I really thought that one character that is shot in the chest was somehow going to “come back from the dead” and figure into the ending. That didn’t happen, but because this character wasn’t taken down by a bullet to the head I thought there was a slight chance that the character would pop up towards the end.
Jesse Kove does a great job as Agent Pike. Kove plays Pike as a super conscientious and dedicated Secret Service agent, which is how you would expect a Secret Service agent to be (he’s also the hero of the movie, so, again, that’s what you expect from the hero in this sort of action thriller). Kove handles his action moments well, and while he isn’t as formidable as Paul Logan when it comes to hand-to-hand brawls, Kove’s Pike is still a guy you don’t want to mess with. The whole “computer and electronics expert” aspect of his character is a little less believable, mostly because when Pike has to explain some sort of computer thing it sounds like he’s reciting dialogue and not “speaking naturally.” Maybe if there were more scenes in the movie where it looked like Pike was hacking into computer systems and whatnot, the character trait would be more plausible/easier to take. Kove has had quite the career in the low-budget B-movie world according to his IMDb page, and I look forward to him doing more action movie hero parts like Agent Pike in President Down. I think the world would become a better place if it happened.
Gail O’Grady does a nice job as President Collins. You completely buy her as the President, as she has the look and the general gravitas to make you believe she is the leader of the free world. Even when she’s attacked through her character’s pacemaker and she’s rendered vulnerable, you can tell that President Collins is doing her damnedest to remain in control and show the world that you can’t push around the United States of America. Great stuff.
Gina Vitori does a good job as Amelia Collins, the President’s daughter. Amelia is in the military, in the Air Force, and we mostly see her in her Air Force uniform around her mother (the movie isn’t clear in terms of Amelia being a part of her mother’s national security team or if she’s just hanging around the White House with her U.S. President mother when her pacemaker is attacked). In the midst of the crisis surrounding her mother, Amelia finds out something amazing and she spends a good chunk of the movie trying to figure out how she will tell her mother her big news. I don’t think you will be all that surprised by how Amelia figures into the movie’s ending.
Modern action legend Lorenzo Lamas does a fine job as Jim Goddard, one of the top officials charged with protecting President Collins. It’s fun watching Lamas sort of “pass the baton” to Kove in terms of action movie heroics, as you know that if President Down had been made in the 1990s, Lamas would be playing Agent Pike and engaging in martial arts beat downs of the bad guys. David Chokachi also does a fine job as Tom Marcus, another top official charged with protecting the president. Chokachi has one of the best scenes in the movie towards the end. It’s hilarious.
The great G. Anthony Joseph is quite diabolical as Dr. Walsh, one of the movie’s main villains. Dr. Walsh has one of the best character introduction scenes in modern action thriller history, and he delivers a truly killer speech towards the end of the movie. And Paul Logan is a true badass as Breacher, a member of Agent Pike’s strike team. Breacher is exactly the type of guy you want on your travelling SWAT team.
I liked President Down quite a bit. Director Nick Lyon and company manage to deliver some decent action moments, including a great sequence involving two planes, and the flick has a top notch cast and an interesting story. The movie isn’t going to change your life, and, yes, the movie would no doubt be more entertaining if it had more resources at its disposal (we’d probably have had fewer head shots if the movie had a higher budget), but President Down works more than it doesn’t, and that’s what matters most with a movie like President Down. If Tubi and The Asylum want to crank out a few more movies like President Down, I would be a happy low-budget B-movie fan. The world could always use a few more well-made low-budget B-movies.
See President Down. See it, see it, see it. President Down is a Tubi Original and is available to watch for free right now on the Tubi streaming platform.
So what do we have here?
Dead bodies: Well over 20.
Explosions: Yes, big ones and a few small ones.
Nudity?: None.
Doobage: A White House press conference. A sudden and unexpected health episode seen on national television. A pacemaker. A flashback to Moscow. A cigar cutter. A Russian newspaper. Bullet to the back. Pacemaker issues. An ambulance ride. A strange phone message. Talk of Wi-Fi. Side streets. Pissed off American security officials. Computer stuff. Multiple pacemaker attacks. Another flashback. Talk of axe throwing. A press conference held at a hospital. A super computer. Off screen bathroom sex. A presumed deserted place in New Orleans. Bolt cutter hooey. Bullet to the neck. A shootout. Guy falls off a shelving unit in slow motion after being shot dead. A hand-to-hand brawl. A cyanide pill. Confusion and consternation. More pacemaker issues. An unexpected dead body. Computer hacking hooey. Arguing. A mansion. Another shootout. Shotgun butt to the face. Another hand-to-hand brawl. Serious neck breaking. Serious workplace disappointment. Attempted interrogation. A joke about a nuclear bomb being in a garage. A detonator. Exploding building. Neck injection. Serious hacking and coughing. An unexpected airplane trip. A one-man Las Vegas casino siege. Attempted strangulation. Serious ass kicking. Slow motion dead body falling. “Cop” killing. A dilapidated briefcase. A communications area. Multiple bullets to the head. Bullet to the chest. More bullets to the head. Texting. Even more bullets to the head. A submarine nuke. A terrific action sequence involving two planes. An unexpected trip outside. Nurse killing. Bullet to the leg. A wicked bullet to the head. Impromptu computer code writing. Flying nuke stuff. More plane stuff. Serious plane landing. A hug.
Kim Richards? None.
Gratuitous: Gail O’Grady as the President of the United States. A new Russian president. “And Lorenzo Lamas.” Talk of an “Alpha Charlie.” A room that is Wi-Fi free. Lorenzo Lamas. A computer investigation. “The President’s vitals.” Guys with guns on a plane getting ready to do violent stuff with those guns. Guys in a Humvee. “New Orleans.” Stuff happening in “Las Vegas.” “What do you fail to understand?” Lawyering up. A brief scene of a truck driving alone down a road. Mint Casino in “Las Vegas.” A device that allows a technician to remotely open every door in a hotel. A hotel safe with a phone in it. “Air Force One.” The nuclear codes. Technical jargon. “Plan B.” Multiple bullets to the head. Guy hiding in a giant duffle bag. A guy flipping a pen around in his hand. Plane-to-plane communication via Morse code using flashlights. Retinal scan hooey. Hand magnets. An improvised door explosive.
Best lines: “Starlight is down!” “It’s not going to be a good look fainting on national television.” “Keep your emotions in check, agent.” “What if we just tell your Mom?” “You know, I’m really going to miss waking up to you every morning. I am, too.” “Not our first rodeo.” “Ah, crap!” “You know, I’m going to start calling you ‘AC’ for ‘Alpha Charlie’ because you love getting your ass chewed.” “Yeah, they’re definitely moving stuff in and out of here.” “Dammit!” “Goddamit, I told you to stand by and wait for local law enforcement. Then you’d have backup to provide a perimeter!” “Stay frosty out there.” “Just get this thing out of me.” “Amelia, please, she’s not going to die.” “Why does a cardiologist need all of that equipment?” “And boom! Cracked the server!” “Could it be something besides the Wi-Fi?” “Freeze right there, fella.” “What do you pigs care about our Tor network?” “Isn’t there anywhere in this entire hospital that doesn’t have Wi-Fi?” “I don’t think it’s the Wi-Fi.” “So, how are we going to play this? Well, it’s not going to play very well with three commandos running into a casino.” “I want this plane up in the air immediately. No delays.” “You are not getting on this plane?” “How much do you weigh? It’s all muscle mass.” “Let’s get this surgery underway.” “Hey, back the fuck up!” “I will never back a war… criminal.” “Open your eyes! Open your eyes for her!” “What was that? I think we’re changing altitude.” “Welcome to World War 3. And remember, you started it.” “Close that football! Close it!” “This is where the magic happens.” “Madam President, cover your ears.” “What was that? It sounded like an explosion.” “My grandchild’s father just saved all our asses.”
