Meld the plots of "Absolute Power" and "Shadow Conspiracy" and you get "Murder at 1600" -- precisely. However, had I actually wanted to see "Shadow Conspiracy" again, I would have marched not to the theater, but to the hospital so they could cut open my skull to make sure my brain was still there. Given that "Shadow Conspiracy" just came out though, the filmmakers of "Murder at 1600" were probably in post production when they felt the giant hand of the Hollywood creative gods drop from the sky and crush their chances of even making enough to cover the cost of Alan Alda's wages (20 cents a day plus all the donuts you can eat).

Obviously, the story centers around a murder in the White House, where somebody has just killed a woman after having sex with her. To make things look legitimate, the House calls in D.C. detective Harlan Regis (Wesley Snipes) and then assigns Secret Service Agent Nina Chance (Diane Lane) to him to make sure he doesn't do anything he's not supposed to do. Shockingly, he does everything he's not supposed to, people start dying, he and Chance become targets and everybody is a suspect.

Unfortunately, the longer this story goes on the harder it is to take. Are we really supposed to believe that somebody inside the White House has the smarts to pull off a murder inside the place but can't seem to off a cop and a female Secret Service agent who are running around D.C. like streakers at Catholic mass? Then, of course, there's the inevitable break-in, which occurs via the "secret" tunnels which, if recent films are any indication, seem to be more frequented in D.C. than the Smithsonian.

What compels Hollywood to make films for people who believe in conspiracy theories anyway? If this is some emergent demographic grouping, we all ought to be scared -- these are the types of people who get worked up into acute paranoia when their own gas doesn't smell like their previous meal.