Every time they have presented me with a Nick Lyon picture, it’s been a classy affair. From wholesome family fun with The Boy, the Dog and the Clown, to intense and intimate disaster drama with On Fire, now Lyon turns his talents to explosive action and espionage with President Down.
I admit when I was checking out the press materials, I was thinking this was possibly going to be a rehash of something akin to those competing President in peril pictures like Roland Emmerich’s White House Down or Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen. And they might forgive you, seeing that the movie is coming to us from The Asylum, noted for Sharknado, along with a cavalcade of mockbusters which deliver a kind of discount version of their multiplex cousins.
But this is Nick Lyon, Mr. Classy, and he brings it again. With a tight and cleverly crafted script by Kenny Zinn, that’s expansive with being expensive, President Down turns out to be a real solid ride that pays off the longer it goes on. The plot turned out to be a brilliant intermingling of Speed meets Air Force One. But the bomb isn’t on the bus. It’s in the President’s chest. Following the signing of a new union between Russia and the USA, the President suddenly collapses and is quickly whisked off to the hospital. Turns out the commander-in-chief has a pacemaker with Wi-Fi capabilities. And someone has hacked the signal, being able to kill the President should their demands not be met.
“The bomb isn’t on the bus. It’s in the President’s chest.”
The role of hero is then thrust upon the leader of the President’s security detail, Jacob Pike (Jesse Kove), who is just the guy you want watching your back, as he’s as good with guns and knives as he is with hacking computer software. The choke-hold this movie takes on the senses tightens its grip as the pace increases, as the ticking clock of a 24-hour time limit to those guarding their incapacitated leader to break the new alliance she has just brokered, or face nuclear reprisal along with the President’s demise.
The Asylum might not make mega-budget movies, but what they deliver with President Down is a satisfying thriller that harkens back to those mid-range pictures Hollywood made in the 90s. Smart plots, good performances, and an electrifying ending. It’s all here. Nick Lyon does it again, making something that belies the sum of its parts, paying off in a way that some of its bigger-budget contemporaries are failing to achieve.
The casting of this is on point, from Kove giving of Reacher vibes to Gail O’Gardy as President Kat Collins and her resourceful daughter with a secret, Amelia, played by Gina Vitori. And as a long-time Snake Eater and Renegade fan, it’s a proper treat to see Lorenzo Lamas playing it cool in the only way he knows how.
In the end, President Down is a surprisingly astute piece of action cinema from a studio strapped with a reputation for schlock and silliness. Nick Lyon and company take all the resources available and hone them into a finely tuned instrument with sweet twists and turns that render it memorable among the sheer volume of indie films of the genre flooding the streamers near you.
"…a surprisingly astute piece of action cinema from a studio strapped with a reputation for schlock and silliness."
