The Sentinel
October 2006 Reviewed by: Jerry Renshaw Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

A Secret Service guy’s job may not be easy, but in this movie, it includes the perk of sleeping with the First Lady (Kim Basinger). That’s where Agent Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas) finds himself in this improbable political thriller. Longtime fellow-agent Breckenridge (Kiefer Sutherland) has a bone to pick with Garrison, who in the past was presumably sleeping with Mrs. Breckenridge as well. Things get ugly when a plot to kill the President is uncovered, and Breckenridge, along with his new partner Jill Marin (Eva Longoria), goes after Garrison on trumped-up charges of treason. Garrison makes his escape, and the (tedious) chase is on. Political thrillers should have a) politics and b) thrills, and The Sentinel runs short on both. The character of the President himself (David Rasche) is little more than a cardboard cutout, and even Basinger is oddly detached in her role. There are too many inconsistencies and loose ends even to go into here; let’s just say that things get only more farfetched as the movie rolls along.

Even more maddening than the half-baked plot and vague characters are the stylistic fillips: quick montages of crazy scribblings to denote assassination plots or the scenes in rural Maryland that are shot with a filter that drastically changes the movie’s color palette. Like the lukewarm direction, they do little to advance the movie, build tension or set mood. On the upside, the movie does look good (if a little sterile), and the 5.1 soundtrack uses the whole soundfield to good advantage.

There are special features aplenty on this DVD. The director and screenwriter George Nolfi holds down a commentary track that wanders but does shed light on the problems in shooting a movie in Washington, D.C. There are companion featurettes that go into the history and culture of the Secret Service and what it takes to make Hollywood actors into Secret Service agents. A retired agent who served as consultant for the movie makes us question how a Secret Service man could carry on an affair with the First Lady without being found out pretty quickly. We won’t even ask about the Secret Service’s retirement age and the 62-year-old Douglas. There are deleted scenes (most of which would have been pretty superfluous) and an alternate ending that doesn’t differ much from the final cut. Theatrical trailers and trailers for other Fox releases round out the features.

It’s not that The Sentinel is a bad movie. If nothing else, it does offer an inside look at the Service. (On the other hand, as the retired Secret Service consultant implied, real agents don’t need to remove their Kevlar vests on the job.) It just seems like a movie that should have gone straight to cable TV rather than making a run through the theaters.

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