AmateurMovieReviews.com

I am a big fan of the television show 24 and of starring actor Kiefer Sutherland, so when I heard that he was going to be in a feature film with the likes of Michael Douglas, Kim Basinger, and Eva Longoria, there was no question that I would eventually watch it. The film is called The Sentinel, and though I wasn't able to see it in the theater, I rented it as soon as it came out on DVD.

Douglas is actually the lead character in the movie, but Sutherland gets plenty of screen time, which was fine by me. Douglas plays Secret Service agent Pete Garrison, a veteran of the force who even took a bullet for President Ronald Reagan in the 1980's. Since then, Garrison's career hasn't exactly been stellar since then. He's never been promoted, though he probably should have been, and is basically just another agent. His current assignment is to protect the First Lady of the United States, Sarah Ballentine (Basinger), with whom he happens to be having a steamy extramarital affair.

The action in this film starts off when one of the agents from Garrison's squad gets gunned down outside the steps of his own home. The murder was made to look like a robbery gone bad, but investigators David Breckenridge (Sutherland) and his rookie partner Jill Marin (Longoria), analyze the crime scene and conclude that it wasn't a robbery after all. Apparently, this particular agent had stumbled upon a conspiracy and was murdered in order to ensure silence.

Garrison goes to work trying to discover what kind of information the murdered agent came across, and soon realizes that there could be a big plot to assassinate the president in the works. Garrison goes to his superior officers with that theory, and since he has some credible evidence, all current agents are required to take a lie detector test. Garrison ends up being the only agent that fails, so he is immediately under a dark cloud of suspicion. Before the Secret Service can bring him in for questioning, he sets off to clear his own name.

The rest of the film deals with Garrison's attempts to get to the bottom of the conspiracy and save the president from being killed. Breckenridge and Marin have the task of trying to bring Garrison in, and along the way they become privy to some of the information that Garrison is uncovering. Breckenridge then has to decide whether he believes in Garrison's innocence or not, with the president's life hanging in the balance the entire time.

Most people who have seen The Sentinel are immediately reminded of the 1993 Clint Eastwood movie In the Line of Fire because both films focus on Secret Service agents trying to protect the president. But I don't think there's much similarity between the two movies beyond that very basic point. At any rate, I don't remember all the details of In the Line of Fire anyway, so I was able to judge The Sentinel entirely on its own merit.

I thought the movie was a decent, but not great, thriller. The plot kept moving along fairly quickly, and though there were several "Yeah, right!" moments of disbelief, they didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the movie.

The main reason that I liked The Sentinel was because of all the wonderful actors in it. Michael Douglas was very good as Pete Garrison. I've never considered myself a Michael Douglas fan, but I notice that I end up liking his movies more often than not. To me, that's an indication of what a fine actor he is. I thought Kiefer Sutherland did tolerably well as Breckenridge, though I had a feeling that he was just a by-the-book Jack Bauer -- in other words, not much of an acting stretch. Basinger and Longoria didn't have many scenes and they certainly didn't detract from the movie when they were on the screen. I wish I had more to say about them than that!

At any rate, if you're looking for a pretty good movie to watch and if you don't have high expectations for a tight script, then I recommend checking out The Sentinel. It's a popcorn movie that does a decent job of entertaining the audience for a couple of hours.