There's a mole on the presidential Secret Service team. The rather intriguing premise concocted by former Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich gets a taut but much too familiar workout in Clark Johnson's The Sentinel.
It's proficient filmmaking on director Johnson's behalf, but George Nolfi's screenplay feels like recycled scenes from older and better movies.
There's more than a passing nod to The Fugitive and In the Line of Fire.
Casting Kiefer Sutherland in a major supporting role begs unfavourable comparisons to his hit TV series 24, which packs in as much suspense as The Sentinel in half the time.
Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas) has devoted his career and almost his life to protecting three presidents.
He even took a bullet for Ronald Reagan and is working toward his retirement as a lead agent on the team of President Ballentine (David Rasche)
Garrison is currently the man responsible for protecting First Lady Sarah Ballentine (Kim Basinger). Their closeness has made them lovers.
Douglas has fashioned a career playing men whose libido puts him and others in danger, as it does when the mole sets him up as the inside man on an attempt to assassinate President Ballentine.
Garrison has to discover who the real mole is while staying one step ahead of the entire presidential Secret Service team dispatched to take him down.
As with Harrison Ford in Firewall, it comes down to a question of whether Douglas, at 61, is a viable action hero.
He looks fit enough and he doesn't seem all that winded when he outruns or disarms men half his age.
Douglas conveys the steely persona essential to a man of action, intelligence and few words, so the scenes in which he strives to outwit the real villains and his pursuers are the best in the film.
As CIA investigator David Breckinridge, Sutherland looks, talks and acts as if he's Jack Bauer of 24 on loan for this top-level assignment.
His Breckinridge is saddled with a lame motivation to hate Garrison and thus cloud his objectivity. Breckinridge is convinced that Garrison, who was once his idol and mentor, had an affair with Breckinridge's wife, implying no Washington wife is safe from Garrison's charms.
The mistrust and rivalry between the two men forces Sutherland and Douglas into encounters more melodramatic than intense.
Eva Longoria plays Breckinridge's new rookie investigator, Jill Marin, who just happens to be a former and favourite student of Garrison.
Her torn loyalties are supposed to complicate the investigation, but they only make her seem too emotional and conflicted for such a serious position.
Jill is essentially window dressing and it certainly doesn't hurt that it's Longoria who got to wear those form-hugging suits.
It's much too obvious much too soon who the real mole is, but maybe Nolfi and Johnson wanted viewers to feel superior for figuring it out.
The Sentinel is not half bad, but it's not nearly as good as it could have been.
(This film is rated PG)
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