The Sentinel is director Clark Johnson’s second feature-length film, as most of his other work has been done on Homicide: Life on the Street, The Shield, and most recently Sleeper Cell.  That’s a pretty strong reputation to compare to 2003’s ill-received S.W.A.T.  The Sentinel is similarly straightforward in presentation and lacks the excitement of a good thriller, but at least Johnson comes off a bit better in this case, delivering on the premises of action and a feeling of authenticity.

Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas) is a veteran United States Secret Service Agent, wounded while protecting Ronald Reagan from John Hinckley in 1981.  Still working in protection after all these years, Garrison is attached to the first lady’s detail.  Meanwhile his former friend Agent David Breckenridge (Kiefer Sutherland) is working in the Protective Intelligence Division, evaluating threats to US Secret Service protectees.  He provides the logical counterpart to Garrison’s instinctual style, completing the Mulder/Scully duality.  Unlike Mulder and Scully though, they don’t get along very well.

Breckenridge blames his marital problems on Garrison, who he believes had an affair with his wife.  Little does he know that Garrison had his sights set quite a bit higher, and has been banging the first lady instead.  Personal difficulties aside, in just a couple of days one of Garrison’s friends at the USSS (played by Johnson) is assassinated, Garrison receives pictures blackmailing him, and they receive evidence that the formerly untouchable USSS indeed has a mole who is trying to help kill the President.  Garrison fails a polygraph and soon his sexual improprieties help put him at number one on the list of suspects, but he determines to find the real mole and figure out what’s going on. 

From the outside, The Sentinel looks a lot like a movie version of 24, complete with Kiefer Sutherland.  It may satisfy some fans of the TV crime genre, complete with forensic evidence and investigators who could rival the mind of Sherlock Holmes, but ultimately it falls considerably more flat.  Without even an explanation of why the bad guys are doing what they do, we just expect them to do bad things.  Who needs motivation in an action movie?  Well, for one thing it would make for a more balanced story and for another it would prevent the end from being as unsatisfying as it is.

Unrelated to the book by Arthur C. Clarke, the 1976 film, or the 1996 TV series of the same name, The Sentinel is based on the book by Gerald Petievich (who also wrote To Live and Die in L.A.).  It apparently uses much the same story, although in the book Kiefer Sutherland’s name was “Martha.”  In keeping with the meticulous detail described by Petievich, we see very wheels of the Secret Service turn, often mechanically so.  Toadyism, rumor, and sexual impropriety are supposedly significant problems within the organization.  We get but a glimpse of them, as all The Sentinel really cares about is whether or not the good guys win, which it does with surprisingly little suspense.  The book may have provided a more solid base for a screenplay than S.W.A.T., but similarities to The Day of the Jackal and The Manchurian Candidate (either version) just remind us that The Sentinel can’t even peek out from the shadow of better action films.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)