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Friday, April 21, 2006
Slick but by-the-book 'Sentinel' thrills nonetheless
A conspiracy to assassinate the American president, a traitor in the Secret Service, a trusted veteran agent framed and Kiefer Sutherland leading the investigation.
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View all photosNo, it's not the big screen version of "24." For one thing, Sutherland is in the wrong role. His by-the-book investigator David Breckinridge follows the clues right to his former mentor, Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas), a veteran agent with a maverick reputation who now leads the first lady's (Kim Basinger) detail.
Garrison is the reason for the chill in the White House marriage and that potentially explosive affair makes him a perfect patsy and an easy blackmail target. Of course, he goes rogue to clear his name and the entire Secret Service is distracted into following its No. 1 suspect.
Eva Longoria gets the thankless role of a recent academy graduate assigned to Breckinridge, apparently to look pretty and pensive while asking questions and delivering exposition. She's less convincing while running in heels and pretending to look competent with a gun in her hand.
Adapted from a novel by Secret Service veteran-turned-author Gerald Petievich, who also wrote "To Live and Die in L.A.," it never matches that film's edgy ambivalence and moral compromise. Even as it hints that Garrison's behavior borders on a betrayal of the position (igniting a White House scandal is a poor way to protect your president), the film quickly forgets such compromising details in the adrenaline rush of the chase.
Director Clark Johnson ("S.W.A.T.") does a fine job of sketching the intricacies of the job and the details of the investigation with slick efficiency, and he makes creative use of awkward angles and blind spots in the climactic clash in subterranean service tunnels.
In between is a slickly executed generic thriller that, like its humorless investigator Breckinridge, does it all by the book.
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