Michael Connelly (Patrick Muldoon) is a secret service agent assigned to protect president Jack Cahill (Roy Scheider) during a flight on which there is an assassination attempt. The would-be assassin is foiled but an innocent crew member is killed. Connelly has had enough of this work and is moved to 'football duty,' carrying the the briefcase which gives the president control over the whole of America's nuclear arsenal. It must be kept within 40 feet of him at all times and officers guarding it have responsibility only for the briefcase and others protecting it - not the president himself.The Chinese are stirring up problems, and Cahill has a meeting with a Taiwanese businessman to ask him to act as a go-between. While the meeting is underway, Connelly's team is systematically attacked and taken out. Both the Cahill and the briefcase are now in the hands of rebel forces who intend to unleash US nuclear weapons on Beijing unless they can get favourable terms for Taiwan. Only Connelly remains at large...The ratings of this film are quite low but this is not any more implausible, or more poorly acted, than a host of other action movies with bigger stars and higher budgets. Actually I think the leads perform well. The lighting is poor but other aspects of filming are perfectly acceptable though the use of slo-mo was a bit random. Underrated action movie.

Poorly done political actioner. Badly photographed, acted, and directed. Every single scene is underlighted, including those very few that are shot during the daytime. It doesn't matter what the location is. At an important conference in the White House, no lights are on, and the only available lighting is a gloomy blue that is filtered through a few windows. The primier of China conducts an earth-shattering phone conversation under conditions of such intense chiaroscuro that he should be contemplating a bust of Homer in a Rembrandt painting. Honest. It's as if he had a tiny spotlight on his face and was otherwise in total darkness. The slow motion deaths are by now obligatory in any ill-thought-out movie.Roy Scheider and Maria Conchita Alonzo do well by their roles, but Scheider is rarely on screen. The other performances are dismissable. There is a pretty Oriental woman in a short tight skirt who totes a gun and is right out of a Bond movie who's accent suggests a childhood spent in Basset, Nebraska, and who should have remained the model she probably started out as. Whoever plays the surviving Secret Service agent aboard the cruise ship was probably picked for the part because he looked most like Johnny Depp, not because of any display of talent. The Chinese villains, representing both Taiwan and mainland China, hiss and grin as they threaten the heroes. The script is pretty awful, recycled from other, better films. There is a lot of shooting aboard the ship and practically everyone winds up mincemeat. Two thirds of the way through, the ship explodes into the expected series of fireballs. Then the movie splits into two related parts. Part one, another shootout, this time in a waterfront warehouse. Part two, an exchange between the Vice President, now acting president, and the oily Chinese premiere, lifted out of both "Dr. Strangelove" and "Fail Safe." We unwittingly launch our missiles. They launch theirs in retaliation. We cannot convince them that our launch was accidental, even though we offer to help them destroy our own missiles. There is even the George C. Scott/ Walter Matthau general who argues that their "nucular" armory can't match ours so we should hit them with everything we've got. More fireballs. The end comes none too soon.

Browsing idly among the movie list on satellite TV I happened on this gem, of which I had no previous knowledge. I watched it through to the bitter end, wondering all the time whether it would lapse into reality, or continue to provide yet another surprise. Suffice it to say that, with the labyrinthine windings of the plot, the intercutting of scenes, the wonderful stereotypes effortlessly portrayed together with the sheer improbability of the story, placed this film in a class of its own for entertainment value (in the fullest sense of the word) and I would recommend it as a good way to pass an hour or two. One mystery, however, remains unsolved - why are all these highly trained people such bad shots and why do they have weapons which rarely, if ever, require reloading ? I was, incidentally,much taken with Iris, the Chinese undercover agent (Korean actress, actually)- she deserves better parts in better films !

Ugh. This movie has so many unbelievable plot contrivances that they made what could have been a good movie into a hideous mess. The story is halfway decent, but the holes in the plot make the execution literally laughable. We're actually supposed to believe that the Secret Service would go against all common sense and allow the President of the United States to be put at unbelievable risk. If this is an indication of the kind of thinking that passes for good judgment among the President's protectors, then we're all in trouble. Roy Scheider turns in a good performance as the President, but it is unfortunately offset by the truly loathsome acting of Patrick Muldoon (who somehow continues to get jobs in Hollywood based solely upon his good looks and his uncanny knack of smirking at every opportunity, regardless of whether the script calls for a smirk). Perhaps someone will see this and be inspired to make a good movie from the premise--or, perhaps someone will see it and say, "Hey, if they can get a movie this bad made, maybe I can, too!"