AT THE MOVIES WITH DILLON KIMMEL
Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas) is the ultimate patriot. He has served in the Secret Service for more than 30 years and has even taken a bullet for President Reagan. The heavily decorated agent puts his life on the line every day to protect the president of the United States. But soon, this loyal American abandons protocol and begins having a scandalous affair with the First Lady (Kim Basinger). And then, a friend tells Garrison he has stumbled into a top-secret “theory.” Then, the friend ends up dead at the hand of a crafty assassin.
Just as Garrison learns of the assassination, one of his old confidants comes forward to tell Garrison of a plot to kill the president. Even more ludicrous, this informant claims that the Secret Service of all agencies has a traitor within its ranks. Then, the assassination plot and murder cases are combined and handed over to Garrison’s former friend David Breckenridge (Kiefer Sutherland) and rookie Jill Marin (Eva Longoria). (A claim by Breckenridge that Garrison had an affair with Breckenridge’s wife ruined the friendship several years before.)
Then, (as if the plot needed any more insane twists) an ex-KGB thug blackmails Garrison with incriminating pictures of him and the First Lady making out at Camp David. Then, Garrison fails a polygraph test and becomes public enemy numero uno. Realizing that he is being used as bait to lure the Secret Service away from the real culprit, Garrison must race against time to find the true assassin. Or so we think. Is Garrison who he says he is, or is he bitter from years of service with little recognition and desperate to be in the spotlight?
There are at least three other plot twists which continue to turn an already confusing plot into a whirlwind. I won’t share them because they’ll give away a relatively predictable and very unoriginal ending.
The Sentinel looks like a nice little thriller on the surface. Kiefer Sutherland looks like he walked onto the wrong set and thinks he is taping an episode of 24. It blends mindless action with some tense moments. But I realized later that I had been punk’d.
Director Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T) does such a good job of moving the action along that the viewer has little time to think about what he/she is watching.
First of all, the problem with filling a script with so many twists and turns is that, at some point, the moviemakers have to go back and answer some of the loose ends. The Sentinel completely ignores this facet and just keeps trucking along. Why is the president a target? How did Garrison’s informant come across his information? We never know. Another thing that bothered me was Garrison’s affair with the First Lady. It did not fit into the plot at all and could have easily been omitted. The movie opens with some sinister imagery that makes viewers think the soon-to-be-assassin is unstable and has an infatuation with death with no real motive. Then, the movie abandons the notion in favor of a very sophisticated and complex assassination plot with a distinct motive (though the viewers are never provided with a motive).
The characters are shallowly developed and the dialogue is filled with cheesy one-liners. Eva Longoria’s character has no point at all, other than providing some extra eye candy. Normally, I am a huge fan of government assassination films (or Kiefer Sutherland in general), but this one just drove me crazy. Apart from introducing an obscenely complex plot and failing to tie up any of the loose ends, The Sentinel delivers a predictable and anti-climactic ending that, as usual, sends the good guys walking off into the sunset having saved the world. 2 stars (and that’s the default rating for any film with Kiefer Sutherland).
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