Shadow Conspiracy

One wonders how did this screen play got to be made into a thriller movie. The writers had no clue into the many holes they were creating in a story so predictable as this. At the same time, one has to question the studio as to why this movie was approved. The director George Cosmatos must have a more clout among the Hollywood bigwigs than we can think.

I never saw this film when it had a commercial run. It was recently shown on cable, and not having anything better to watch, decided to take a chance. Wow, it's that bad.

The film could have used a more likable hero than Bobby Bishop, blandly played by Charlie Sheen, who whispers his lines incomprehensibly. The pairing of Linda Hamilton with Sheen doesn't add anything to the movie. Donald Sutherland must have a lot to explain to his friends in how he accepted to appear in this picture.

Bobby Bishop's role in the White House was never made clear, but when they needed him, they sent a helicopter, and he arrived in a conference room full of suits still wearing his sweaty Princeton sweatshirt. Once he cleaned up and put on his own suit, Bishop went before the press to clear up a public relations problem--after reminding a certain congressman what could happen if said congressman didn't help.

A secret meeting with Prof. Pochenko promised to reveal something not quite kosher in the White House. But a man with a gun wanted the information to stay secret. So Bishop spent the rest of the movie on the run and trying to uncover secrets with the help of Washington Herald reporter Amanda Givens. Meanwhile, someone was capable of monitoring pretty much every phone call that took place in the movie.

I like Charlie Sheen better as a womanizing jerk, but he was just fine here. Both Sheen characters know how to scheme and lie and otherwise be quite charming to get what they want. Donald Sutherland did a credible job as the White House Chief of Staff who didn't have faith in the President's ability. And Sam Waterston didn't exactly inspire confidence as the President. Linda Hamilton was good as Amanda.

This wasn't a great action thriller, but it was good nevertheless. Too violent for my taste (and there was a stern warning on the TV station I watched, even after the movie was cleaned up for TV), but I enjoyed the chases and the occasional comedy.

MST3K fodder. It's so bad it's actually worth seeing just for that reason. There are some hilarious things in it, such as the mysterious device the bad guy is seen working on for the whole movie, that turns out to be this tiny helicopter that flutters around carrying and firing a machine gun without so much as a wobble, but is brought down by a bag of balloons (the kind they release at political conventions). Many other wonderful touches of that sort. Stars Charlie Sheen. There's one scene where he spends five minutes recording a conversation, only to drop the microcassette in the Potomac River by accident. If they'd cast Emilio Estevez in the part that never would've happened.

My Take: Routine political thriller with mediocre action scenes and predictable twists.

A rarely seen political thriller, which made a very poor box-office response, I managed to catch THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY on TV just now, and while I was glad that I satisfied my curiosity to see this rare film, I didn't exactly feel this film was all special. Considering the box-office response to it, SHADOW CONSPIRACY is not all quite as bad as critics and the public reacted to it, but still ain't very good to begin with and everything, from script to direction, is pretty predictable. Charlie Sheen plays the presidential assistant who finds himself caught up with assassins and chases (a lot of them) when he discovers a deadly conspiracy which lurks amongst the White House staff. After a professor is murdered, Sheen aids the help of ex-flame reporter Amanda Givens (Linda Hamilton) to uncover the traitor and unlock the conspiracy of the title.

But this script, written by Adi Hasak & Ric Gibbs, are pedestrian as they come, not much differing from other White House conspiracy thrillers as in ABSOLUTE POWER and MURDER AT 1600. Some considerable talents (Donald Sutherland, Ben Gazzara and Stephen Lang) try their best on a routine script, but rarely saves it from predictability of the script. Not to mention a ludicrous scene which involves a toy helicopter, which seems far too silly and out-of-place in this "serious" political thriller. THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY has its moments I'm sure, some of which are much to under-appreciated (director George Pan Cosmatos serves up some decent chase scenes), but none of which lifts this routine thriller of which there's not much payoff or surprises.

Rating: ** out of 5.

Special Assistant to the President Bobby Bishop (Charlie Sheen) is a dedicated member of The President's staff (Sam Waterston) during a time where the public and several members of the inner circle such as Chief of Staff Jacob Conrad (Donald Sutherland) are wary of the proposed defense cuts which Bobby attempts to spin to the public. As Bobby is approached by Professor Yuri Pochenko (Theodore Bikel) who has claims of a shadow government operating within the highest echelons of political power, an assassin (Stephen Lang) kills Pochenko and soon sets his sights on Bobby sending him on the run with help from journalist Amanda Givens (Linda Hamilton) to unravel what's going on and who's behind it.

Shadow Conspiracy is a 1997 political thriller that marked the final film of George P. Cosmatos and one of the last films to be distributed by Disney based company Cinergi Pictures prior to going defunct in 1998. The movie was dumped into the minimum number of theaters to qualify for a "wide release" opening in 16th place behind several holdovers and the opening of the special edition of Star Wars. Critical reception was overwhelmingly negative with many panning the thin characterizations, plot holes, and logical gaffes. With its lead in Charlie Sheen and a silly plot that's held together with duct tape and hope, one could be forgiven for thinking this was a lost script for Hot Shots 3 that someone accidently played straight.

There's very little substance to our characters who never evolve beyond archetypes (some don't even have names like The President or The Agent) and all the actors are more like cogs in a barely functioning machine than proper characters. While political action thrillers have a storied history in film such as The 39 Steps or Three Days of the Condor, Shadow Conspiracy doesn't have the style, character, or thrills of those films especially since it plays at a surprisingly slack pace. While the key appeal of this type of film is in watching the hero put the pieces together, Bobby doesn't so much "put them together" as much as he does stumble around and convenient kick them in the right spot making him one of the most comedically inept protagonists I can recall of recent memory. But it's not like Bobby's the only inept and stupid character on display as we have Stephen Lang's The Agent who has the subtlety of Schwarzenegger's The Terminator and somehow is not seen or described by anyone including the police despite firing guns in broad daylight or hanging off the tops of jeeps. This culminates in an absolute howler of a climax that makes you question: "someone paid $600,000 for this screenplay and made it!?"

Shadow Conspiracy is one of the dumbest movies ever made and is baffling how a mainstream studio film with decent sized names can hold together worse than some direct-to-video action films.