SYNOPSIS

Pete Garrison is a U.S. Secret Service agent who saved a president’s life by jumping in front of a hail of bullets, over twenty years ago.

Well-liked and respected by his colleagues in the Secret Service, Garrison is a career agent who now heads the First Lady’s detail. He lives in a high-level, orderly world of hierarchical structure, plans, maps, motorcades, code names, lingo and procedures. It's a universe that makes sense, until secrets begin to tear it apart. Pete's fellow agent and friend, Charlie Merriweather, hints at wanting to share critical and confidential information. Before that can happen, however, Merriweather is shot dead at his house in a crime that is made to look like a botched robbery.

The investigation falls to the Secret Service’s top investigative agent, David Breckinridge, a volatile combination of by-the-book and hothead, Garrison's protégé, and, until recently one of Garrison’s best friends. Breckinridge follows the evidence and only the evidence and scrupulously tries to avoid working from his gut. That’s what being a great investigator requires. Garrison, as perhaps the greatest protective agent in the service, often has to work from gut, from pure instinct. In protective work that is often all you have.

Garrison’s and Breckinridge’s recent falling out was triggered by Breckinridge’s mistaken belief that Garrison was having an affair with Breckinridge's now ex-wife.

Jill Marin, a tough, sassy and ambitious young agent who just graduated second in her class at the Secret Service Academy, arrives for her first field posting. She has requested a work detail with Breckinridge because Garrison, while leading a field instruction exercise at the Academy told Jill that Breckinridge was the best investigator in the entire Service.

Together the trio begins to uncover what appears to be an inside job to assassinate the president – a traitor in the ranks of the Secret Service. It's never happened in the institution's 141-year history.

Suspicion ultimately falls on Garrison, who's going to find it extremely difficult to clear his name because someone is framing him.

Whoever is framing Garrison knows he’s vulnerable because he’s devoting considerable effort to hiding a monumental secret. Suspected of being treasonous, Garrison goes on the run, pursued by Breckinridge and Marin – his own colleagues – as he tries to nail the real mole and save the president's life.

Review by
MICHAEL RAY

As a fan of the ultra-addictive show 24, I was excited to see Kiefer Sutherland making a trip to the big screen, playing a role similar to his hard-edged Jack Bauer character. Would the duo of Michael Douglas and Sutherland, with a mix of sexy Eva Longoria thrown in for good measure, capture the expert pacing and energy of the best special agent show on TV? Would this be the first step in Sutherland’s return to big screen glory?

In a word, no.

The Sentinel, directed by Clark Johnson, fails to raise Sutherland’s movie career from the dead let alone any excitement level for the viewer. At best, the film is an average thriller, and is better suited for Sunday night TV movie-of-the-week fodder. Forget it paralleling the brilliance that is 24; in fact, lower your expectation and take 24 out of your head entirely. What we have is a plodding, predictable narrative that fails to engage. Blame the poor editing, blame the stale characterization, and definitely blame the writing—all of these elements are guilty of helping to sink this cinematic ship.

The story introduces us to Pete Garrison (Douglas), who begins to self-destruct his respectable career as a secret service agent by carrying on with the First Lady (Kim Basinger). Garrison is also wrongfully tied up in a plot to assassinate the president, and the movie quickly descends into a lesser version of the much superior The Fugitive. David Breckinridge (Sutherland) is an old colleague of Garrison’s, and is handed the task of hunting down the MIA Garrison. Sutherland brings a much needed spark to his scenes, but he and Douglas fail to produce much chemistry. Jill Marin (Longoria), tags along as Breckinridge’s intern, but quickly becomes nothing more than eye candy—the producers obviously are trying to catch the bus of her success on Desperate Housewives. The whole ho-hum affair (no pun intended) ends with a loud, poorly edited shoot-out in a setting we’ve never seen before: a *gasp* stairwell.

Overall, the movie treats its subject matter a little too lightly, never respecting the depths of the characters’ lives and choices. For instance, when Breckinridge finally discovers that Garrison didn’t sleep with Mrs. Breckinridge but instead has been, ahem, “protecting” the First Lady, all is instantly forgiven between them.

“You thought you could get away with this?” Breckinridge asks Garrison incredulously. They chuckle about it like college buddies discussing their first female conquests. It seems as long as Breckinridge’s wife is in the clear, then good ol’ Garrison can cheat with any woman he wants.

But be sure your sins will find you out…early on, photos of the affair surface and push Garrison down shady roads in order to cover his sexual misdeeds. He winds up in places he shouldn’t be, and soon his career is destroyed. Thank the writers for at least not rewarding Garrison’s behavior in the end—he is eventually fired when it all hits the fan.

Oh the irony…protecting the president’s life for years, and yet stabbing him in the back in the end. The movie stops before we can see the lasting ramifications of the affair—the president’s ruined political career, his broken marriage, and the years of pain to follow.

But the consequence for 24 fans is a good one, because this lackluster film will keep Jack Bauer in TV land for at least one more season.