A conspiracy unfolds early in “The Sentinel,” a political thriller starring Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland as Secret Service agents at odds
at the very moment the country needs them most. Someone plans to kill the president, and a mole in the 141-year-old organization is aiding the bad guy.
Revealing the co-conspirators is not a spoiler – at least not in the usual sense.
Director Clark Johnson, his cinematographer and composer have united to perpetrate a coverup. From the start, they spin the camera and churn the music in tiring, familiar ways. “I am Washington-based thriller, see me zoom, hear my portentous French horns.” The editor is likely in on it too.
Granted, tricking up the genre is not a federal crime, but sometimes it should be a movie misdemeanor.
Johnson’s resorting to these pyrotechnics hints that he (“S.W.A.T.”) doesn’t quite trust the story. “The Sentinel” was adapted by George Nolfi from a novel by Gerald Petievich, a one-time Secret Service agent.
Douglas plays Pete Garrison. We’re told he was one of the agents in the president’s detail in 1981.
The most jarring footage in the film isn’t proprietary. It belongs to us all: scenes of the shooting of President Reagan. Garrison took a bullet that day.
Now he protects “Cincinnati” – code name for the first lady. To some, it’s a step down on the career ladder. Then again, she looks an awful lot like Kim Basinger. David Rache gets the vote as a perfectly nonpartisan, nondescript president.
Sutherland’s agent, David Breckinridge, isn’t intuitive like Garrison, his one-time friend. He makes this clear when he dresses down rookie agent Jill Marin (Eva Longoria of “Desperate Housewives”).
While Garrison is protecting the first lady, his friend and fellow agent, Charlie Merriweather, meets his end. Earlier he had approached Garrison about an unnamed concern.
Soon, an old informant contacts Garrison about a plot to assassinate the president.
A few more coincidences ensue, and before you can say 9mm Sig Sauer, Garrison has become suspect No.1. Is he working for a drug cartel? For al-Qaeda? Have they united?
He’s guilty of something, after all.
Garrison is meant to be a complicated hero, flawed and honorable. Yet Douglas’ talent for finessing just that kind of ambiguity is wasted here.
This is the sort of script that when a dodgy character says, “I’m dead serious,” you think, no you’re dead.
Still, “The Sentinel” has a few nice moments, small and human. Rushing the president out of an event through a kitchen, one agent says in a kind but firm way to a worker, “Sir, would you put down that knife for a sec.” Then there’s the first lady’s exquisite use of the marital “fine,” the answer between mates that means anything but.
But these are minor details in a film that wants to honor the Secret Service details that protect not so much the president as the presidency. (Though “Guarding Tess” and “In the Line of Fire” both did it differently and better.)
Being introduced to a new jargon has its pleasures. But the movie strains with fast cuts and Steadicam swoops to make thrilling a job that, while hardly mundane, should be routine.
Early in the movie, when Breckinridge and Marin arrive at the scene of Merriweather’s murder, Breckinridge lectures a police detective: “The problem with gut feeling is that the only evidence you see is the kind that supports your gut feeling.”
Early on, this gut told me “The Sentinel” would not be a fully satisfying ride. Hard as I watched, it never offered evidence to the contrary.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
** | “The Sentinel”
PG-13 for some intense action violence and a scene of sensuality|1 hour, 45 minutes|POLITICAL THRILLER|Directed by Clark Johnson; written by George Nolfi, based on Gerald Petievich’s novel; photography by Gabriel Beristain; starring Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, Eva Longoria, Kim Basinger, Martin Donovan |Opens today at area theaters.
