THE SENTINEL
A "24" and a "Fugitive", both "In the Line of Fire"
PopcornReel.com Movie Review: "The Sentinel"
By Omar P.L. Moore/April 23, 2006
All you need to know about "The Sentinel", a tepid
and poorly-scripted thriller, is contained in the headline atop this page, one
that mixes a hit television series, an Oscar-winning film, and an
Oscar-nominated Clint Eastwood secret service drama. Clark Johnson's film,
which at times works tension into a story quite well thanks to Christophe Beck's
music, is an otherwise average effort and a surrogate amalgam of the three
productions above.
Michael Douglas marks his return to the big screen after a three-year absence as
United States Secret Service agent Pete Garrison, a veteran who took a bullet
for president Ronald Reagan in 1981 and is framed in an assassination attempt on
the current president (played by David Rasche). To complicate things,
Garrison is having an affair with the First Lady (Kim Basinger) and is pitted in
a grudge match with a relentless, by-the-book special investigator David
Breckenridge (Kiefer Sutherland). The two have a history of animosity
between them. Thanks to the film's back story, we learn that Garrison has
great difficulty keeping his hands off other men's wives. The funniest
line of the film is delivered by Mr. Sutherland, who sarcastically tells Mr.
Douglas' character that it's "practical" to engage in an affair with the top
woman in the country.
"Desperate", and "24" : Eva Longoria and
Kiefer Sutherland in hot pursuit in Clark Johnson's film "The Sentinel".
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox
There are occasional earmarks of David Fincher's "Seven" here -- visual effects
like those in that film creep into this narrative as an unnecessary and
overproduced part of "The Sentinel"-- in a bid to remind the audience that there
are many people in the United States who call in threats on the life of a
president on a daily basis. As those annoying images fade from Mr.
Johnson's film, plot holes grow. The central plot about a shady trio of
would-be assassins with connections to an agent in the Secret Service appears to
be disjointed from the film, as does an incident midway through the film that
takes the audience's breath away. Then the film turns into an abrupt ad
for "The Fugitive", with Mr. Sutherland sounding a tad more in tone like the Sam
Gerard character played by Tommy Lee Jones than the Jack Bauer character Mr.
Sutherland plays in the television drama "24". Mr. Douglas, in this
"Fugitive" moment, plays the Harrison Ford role, running hard from the law (and
running out of breath) when he realizes the frame job on him is almost complete.
In short, "The Sentinel" feels like a standard television series interrupted by
wayward plot points-as-television commercials for films that we've seen many
times before.
Besides the fact that "The Sentinel" is predictable, there are other weaknesses.
The Pete Garrison-First Lady tryst is neither suspenseful, interesting or even
worth the time and energy Mr. Johnson spends on it. He recognizes this by
quickly dispatching of it when it has no place else to go. Eva Longoria of
television's "Desperate Housewives" cannot enliven this film as a rookie agent
under investigator Breckenridge's watchful wing. Kim Basinger delivers
lines at a different speed from every other actor in the film, while as
president Mr. Rasche is too preoccupied with saving his role instead of
saving-the-world-as-president. And Mr. Douglas looks more like his father
Kirk than he ever has. In his early sixties now and a father again, Mr.
Douglas has perhaps closed the deal against appearing in any more action films.
As he leaves the Washington, D.C. landscape in the film and is given the
farewell treatment from his on-screen colleagues, one could almost be forgiven
for thinking that he was also saying goodbye to his loyal movie audience and
instead focusing full-time on producing, which he also did on this film.
In the case of "The Sentinel", for Mr. Douglas "The Streets of San Francisco"
never looked better.
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