Main characters Lee and Jessie, the veteran and aspiring photographers accordingly, are introduced first meeting while covering a scene in NYC where a civilian mob is pushing against riot police surrounding a tanker truck, probably with water. The characters take cover as a suicide bomber rushes in and blows everyone up. Jessie photographs Lee photographing the aftermath of corpses.
With the full traveling party assembled, including Lee's colleague Joel and their old veteran journalist friend Sammy, they first encounter armed gas station attendants, buying gas from them for 300CAD as 300USD is worth only a sandwich. In the meantime, Jessie's attention is drawn to a pair of bloodied men who are strung up to the side. The attendant escorting her proudly cites them as caught looters and offers to kill them on her command, scaring her. Lee diverts the attendant's attention by offering to take his photo with the hanging looters.
In the next encounter, the gang is attached to a squad of shirt-wearing soldiers, covering their engagement with uniformed enemies at a large building complex. Entered as a smash cut, the scene doesn't include how the gang first approached the combatants. Though I don't think it is said for sure, I believe the shirts are Western Forces engaging Loyalists, considering the rest of the movie giving the impression that the WF are journalist-friendly while Loyalists at DC are said to "shoot journalists on sight". During the engagement, the WF squad immediately shoot a wounded Loyalist soldier they find left wailing alone. After the combat ends, the WF squad escort several bagged POWs outside and execute them with a machine gun as Jessie takes pictures.
Next, the gang is forced to take cover at a small abandoned fair in the middle of a field when an unseen sniper shoots at them from a large cabin in the distance. There they meet an opposing WF sniper team who begrudgingly tolerates their presence. The spotter calls Joel retarded for asking stupid questions about the situation, unconcerned by the possibility that the cabin sniper could also be WF. The scene immediately ends when the sniper team fires a killshot on the cabin sniper.
Next, the gang happens across a pair of journalist friends from Hong Kong, who thought it would be a funny joke to pretend to be malicious pursuers and also hop cars mid-driving, a very bizarre scene. Immediately after, Jessie and one of the Hongkongers are caught up the road by an armed trio of men of unknown affiliation who are in the process of dumping corpses into a mass grave. At a loss for options, Lee and Joel approach the men to talk their way through a rescue. After suddenly shooting dead the captive besides Jessie, the head armed man asks "what kind of American" everyone is, seemingly appeased by any place in the (former) United States. The situation escalates when he asks the remaining panicked Hongkonger last, immediately shooting him upon the blubbering answer that he's from Hong Kong, therefore "Chinese" rather than American. While everyone is now shouting, Sammy, who was left in hiding, comes in driving over a couple of the armed men with the car, quickly gathering everyone else before fleeing from the last remaining armed man. It turns out that Sammy got shot during this daring rescue, and he's dead from the wound by the time the gang reach the main WF staging ground in Charlottesville for the invasion of DC, stirring the most grief from Joel.
Finally, the gang is attached to WF forces as they battle around the National Mall of DC, heading towards the walled-off White House explicitly to kill the president, not capture. As the gate is being penetrated, the usually-stoic Lee has a panic attack, showing how Jessie has exceeded her. The presidential motorcade makes a break for it and quickly crashes outside of the wall, drawing the attention of almost all the WF soldiers even though it's obviously a diversion. With the White House lawn suddenly empty, the gang is simply able to walk into the White House, followed by a single WF squad who quickly take the lead. The squad encounters the press secretary who requests negotiations for the president to surrender, including passage to Greenland or Alaska. The squad simply shoots her and then proceeds to engage with the secret service. During the firefight, Jessie stands out in the open to take a photo, prompting Lee to rush out and take a bullet for her, dying immediately as Jessie instinctively takes pictures of the moment, a callback to the beginning of the movie when Jessie questions if Lee would coldly photograph her dead body. As the WF squad has the president at gunpoint in the Oval Office, Joel, enraged by the death of Lee, asks for just a final quote from the president instead of the interview he originally wanted. The president whimpers "Don't let them kill me," to which Joel coldly responds "That'll do," before the WF soldiers shoot the president while Jessie takes pictures. Cut to credits, overlaid over a developing photo of the WF squad posing with smiles over the dead president.
