President Under Siege, originally known as The Prime Minister is a Belgium political thriller from 2016 written and directed by Erik Van LOOY. It's about the prime minister of Brussels being forced to kill the president of the United States or his family will get killed by a bunch of queeny mercenaries.
Even though it ended with a happy ending, like all fairy tales do, President Under Siege seems to be nothing more than a depressing Dogma 95' era European drama shoved into a very Hollywood thriller, in that it is both high octane and incredibly special in it's needs, like needing a bigger budget.
The villains possess sci-fi gadgetry like in the fast and the furious films, their motivations are flimsy and laughably vapid. This mixture of arthouse and blockbuster never gels. The low-fi aspect of the production values make the improbability of the plot all that more evident. This small time Brussels effort simply doesn't have enough money to make you take it seriously.
You couple this with the aforementioned overbearingly sinister henchmen, the off tone fantastical plot and even some potential misogyny, what you get is a film that is either a convoluted fable about adultery or an overreaching high concept thriller that tried to cover up it's lack of resources with a fake realist aesthetic that comes off as an incredibly stupid stylistic choice due to the overblown plot.
The few things that you can say good about this film, and the reason why i'm not rating it lower that i really want to, is that the cinematography is good and that the screenplay evidently had a lot of passion put into it, albeit a chintzy and sadistic passion.
President Under Siege is a muddling Belgium political thriller that simply has no idea what it wants to do. Oh the irony.
Even though it ended with a happy ending, like all fairy tales do, President Under Siege seems to be nothing more than a depressing Dogma 95' era European drama shoved into a very Hollywood thriller, in that it is both high octane and incredibly special in it's needs, like needing a bigger budget.
The villains possess sci-fi gadgetry like in the fast and the furious films, their motivations are flimsy and laughably vapid. This mixture of arthouse and blockbuster never gels. The low-fi aspect of the production values make the improbability of the plot all that more evident. This small time Brussels effort simply doesn't have enough money to make you take it seriously.
You couple this with the aforementioned overbearingly sinister henchmen, the off tone fantastical plot and even some potential misogyny, what you get is a film that is either a convoluted fable about adultery or an overreaching high concept thriller that tried to cover up it's lack of resources with a fake realist aesthetic that comes off as an incredibly stupid stylistic choice due to the overblown plot.
The few things that you can say good about this film, and the reason why i'm not rating it lower that i really want to, is that the cinematography is good and that the screenplay evidently had a lot of passion put into it, albeit a chintzy and sadistic passion.
President Under Siege is a muddling Belgium political thriller that simply has no idea what it wants to do. Oh the irony.