The Sentinel

Directed by Clark Johnson

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

3 stars

Leaving the screening for “The Sentinel” I overheard the guy next to me say, “Coming in, I was all super-hyped for some ‘24’ type of shit. And it wasn’t up to that. But it was good, yo.”

The man made sense on all counts.

“The Sentinel” stars Keifer Sutherland as David Breckinridge, the Secret Service agent assigned to investigate a possible threat to the President. It’s understandable to think this is “24”—the movie. But it’s not. It makes less sense, doesn’t have that clock, and is slightly more sedate.

Breckinridge’s investigation—with the assistance of superfluous hottie Jill Marin (“Desperate Houswives’” Eva Langoria)—leads to his old mentor, Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas), with whom he now has complicated beef. Garrison heads the First Lady’s (the still hot Kim Bassinger) security detail—when he’s not schtuping her, of course. Could Garrison have been framed?

Yes. Yes he was. And if you haven’t figured that out from the trailer and the description above, you’re probably not going to see this movie.

For those who are interested, however, “The Sentinel” is pretty solid entertainment. The script, though unsurprising, does include a few nice touches—Garrison is ostensibly one of the agents that took a bullet for Reagan in 1981. But as a whole, it is no improvement over screenwriter George Nolfi’s last attempt at hipping up an old genre, “Ocean’s 12.”

The key pleasure is the strong directing by Clark Johnson, who has quietly transformed himself from a respected TV character actor (“Homicide: Life on the Street”) to a very adept B-movie work-man—he also helmed “SWAT.”

His training was on police dramas of both the procedural—“Law and Order: SVU”—and the action—“The Shield”—oriented ends of the spectrum. The result is that he knows what he is doing and has found a cast of charismatic professionals who play reliably to type; no one is stretching their capabilities and it mostly works. Johnson even has a cameo as the murdered agent that starts the ball rolling.

Johnson throws in tricks to make the suspension-of-belief easier: he makes sure to scan over the protester outside the White House who has been there since the ’70s, and has Marin wear more conservative clothing as she gets more used to the job.

The director and cast are a little too professional for the movie they’re making, even on autopilot; it would probably have worked better as one of HBO’s old school Major Motion Movies.

Shouldn’t someone else take over the investigation when it becomes clear that Breckinridge is too tied up in it to complete it appropriately? Why can’t they trace Garrison’s phone records when he goes rogue? Why does Breckinridge clear Garrison after being so certain of his guilt, before he receives the key information proving Garrison’s innocence? Why is the first lady, who should be the strongest female character, a passive slut?

One of the biggest problems, however, is simply that this movie could have been made 10 years ago. The events of the last five years should make this sort of tense terrorist thriller more exciting, more vital, more visceral. This could really happen, a viewer should think. Instead it devolves into an entertaining bastard child of “The Fugitive,” “The Peacemaker,” and “24”—a program that has all the urgency “The Sentinel” lacks.

There are plot holes even in the classic of the genre, “In the Line of Fire.” The difference is that Malkovich and Eastwood were acting. Both sides were attractive and there was real tension and mystery. That was a movie. This is an entertainment. It is a better enterntainment than the Wesley Snipes version of a similar story, “Murder at 1600.” But it is an entertainment none-the-less. Take it as such, and enjoy.

Bottom Line: To paraphrase the dude in front of me: it’s no “24,” but it’s good, yo.

—Reviewer Scoop A. Wasserstein can be reached at wasserst@fas.harvard.edu.