Review of The Sentinel (2006) by Markb. — 28 Apr 2006

What has happened to Michael Douglas? Like his dad, Kirk, was once able to do, Douglas the son at one time not only made movies that--good or bad--tapped perfectly into the tensions and anxieties of their times (The China Syndrome, Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, Basic Instinct, Disclosure, Falling Down) but were so supernaturally skilled at doing so that he almost seemed sometimes to be CREATING the issues themselves.

Lately, though, Douglas has been settling for by-the-book action/mystery material (Don't Say A Word, for example) that's about as up-to-the-minute as that box of 8-track tapes stored in your parents' attic.

The Sentinel, in which Douglas plays Secret Service agent Pete Garrison, who's falsely implicated in a Presidential assassination plot, and of course must both prove his innocence and find the real culprit, is not only Douglas' worst film since the absurd World War 2 romance Shining Through, but it's giving last year's Flightplan a hard race for the most idiotic big-budget studio thriller of the decade.

From a casting standpoint, the movie couldn't be more inept: what's the point of hiring Keifer Sutherland from TV's 24 to essentially duplicate his Jack Bauer characterization (right down to his trademark vocal quirk of exhaling all his dialogue) in a movie that has none of that flawed show's admittedly effective, adrenalin-pounding pacing or excitement? Why hire Desperate Housewives' gorgeous Eva Longoria in a role (as a new recruit) that requires her to be nothing more than set decoration, only to have Sutherland tell her to dress more modestly in the film's opening scenes, then have her spend mosty of the movie comlpletely buttoned up.

..especially since the same costumer has Kim Basinger, as the First Lady, display far more on-screen flesh than any US President's wife has since Jackie Kennedy over 40 years ago? Basinger's thankless role gives her no opportunity to utilize the slightly tarnished beauty that makes her performances in films like L.

A. Confidential so affecting, but she's at the core of what makes this movie so offensively wrongheaded. Garrison, who is established early on as such a horndog that Washington DC high schools really do need to lock up all their doors whenever he's on patrol, is having an affair with Basinger's First Lady.

..which, if you give it a moment's thought, is such a hatefully stupid, selfish thing for a man entrusted with protecting the Chief Executive to be doing that he should be dismissed the instant he's discovered boinking her.

Period, case closed, end of story. (Consider that a Secret Service agent's sworn duty is not just to defend the President, but by obvious association, this country, and that he's engaging in activities that could have far-reaching emotional effects on the man who has the power to start World War 3.

..nope, firing isn't enough. Regardless of whether he's involved in a terror plot or not, Garrison deserves to be brought up for treason.) Now it's perfectly true that a solid director can stage and film action sequences so exciting, visceral and fun to watch that you forget just how dumb the premise is, as Wes Craven did last year with Red Eye and David R.

Ellis did the year before that with Cellular, but Clark Johnson, who once accomplished the admittedly impressive feat of making S.W.A.T. the movie as brain-dead as S.W.A.T. the TV show, is not the man for the job; his setups achieve nothing but a profound sense of deja vu in individual viewers and a mighty chorus of snores in collective audiences.

I haven't read the book by Gerald Petievich that George Nolfi's screenplay is based on, and maybe it's a vast improvement (I'll probably never know), but if Petievich's methods of introducing and revealing the real bad guy is anything like Nolfi's and Johnson's, there oughta be a law prohibiting any of them from watching any more episodes of Scooby-Doo before engaging in any further mystery-suspense endeavors.

And judging the movie version of The Sentinel on its own merits or lack thereof, it's the equivalent of a cheap thriller novel you pick up at the airport gift shop before boarding, and leave unfinished on your seat when you exit the plane.