This is one seriously absurd movie. I don't mind watching B movies and usually I know what I'm going to see when I do, but this definitely surprised me - and not in a good way.
The cast was quite impressive, Roy Scheider (from the classic 'Jaws'), Michael Biehn (from the classic 'The Terminator'), Maria Conchita Alonso (from the classic 'The Running Man') and Patrick Muldoon (from the not-so-classic 'Starship Troopers'). It is hard to believe that the first two actors mentioned have been reduced to this. Michael Biehn's talents are again wasted as a two-bit henchman and he seems to be acting with his eyes closed, while Roy Scheider seems as if he would rather be back on Seaquest DSV rather than being this hapless president. Muldoon is what you expect from a B movie hero and his acting couldn't be any more boring.
It was like the script wanted to go against everything in the book by killing off several characters who should of lived and having major cities actually bombed (when usually they are just threatened), but I guess to balance things out, they made most of the characters typically stereo-typed. My main problem with this film though was that they portrayed the Chinese as inept and unreasonable, and they weren't even the bad guys! It was as if the makers thought that if they do something really outrageous it may work, but no viewer would ever believe that anything in this film could happen. You may want to watch this just to see how bad and how contrived this is.
