The Sentinel

In The Sentinel (2006) a veteran secret service agent who is having an affair with the wife of the President finds himself framed for an assassination plot. The secret service agent who accuses him is his former best friend--former because the veteran agent had an affair ten years earlier with the younger agent's wife. Melodrama fever.

The Sentinel has the entertainment value of an episode of Law and Order. It is entertaining, but not very good. It moves along slowly, the plot twists are predictable, and it's full of holes and dead ends. Kiefer Sutherland strays a short distance away from his Jack Bauer persona to play the younger secret service agent, while Michael Douglas plays the veteran agent. If Douglas' character has gone unpromoted for 25 years, why he is so crafty and effective once he learns he's been falsely accused? Why does an old country store in the middle of rural Virginia have high-speed Internet? Why can the older Douglas outrun the younger Sutherland? Why is the suspect Douglas able to get past numerous secret service agents to reach and rescue the president from the real assassins? A subplot involving Sutherland's father goes nowhere.

This film portrays the White House as a prison for the President's wife—their marriage is a charade—perhaps this is a comment on the Clinton marriage. It's not clear whose fault the sham marriage is. The President himself is a hollow bag of mildly rhetorical air. The world of the film hardly seems to exist outside the main characters. The dramatic tension of the film comes out of the estrangement of the main characters and their reconciliation and, to a lesser extent, from the Michael Douglas affair with the President's wife, played by Kim Basinger. Towards the end, when the assassination plot unfolds, the film generates a small amount of interest and suspense.

Michael Douglas seems unenthusiastic and unconvinced. Kiefer Sutherland vacillates between loud rage and depressive indifference. Basinger seems bored. Everyone lacks conviction. The lackluster half-baked script, the poor direction, and sluggardly editing push this film along towards a conclusion that doesn't come soon enough