Really Surprised!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Special Agent Pete Garrison is convinced that someone has managed to infiltrate the White House. When a White House Agent is murdered, Garrison is framed and blackmailed over an affair with the First lady. He is relieved of his duties, but Garrison won't stop in trying to prove his innocence, and save the life of the President. While attempting to uncover the person behind it all, he comes into confrontation with his protégé, Agent Breckinridge, whom is convinced that he had an affair with his wife.....It's a pretty sound premise, Douglas having relations with the First Lady, and then being framed for treason, but it wreaks of In The Line Of Fire, and the similarities to 24 cannot be helped, because Sutherland is playing nothing more than Jack Bauer in a suit.And this is where the film makes it's first mistake. With the roles reversed, this could have been 24: the movie, that was floating Hollywood for an age, and Douglas would have played Sutherland's in a Gordon Gekko type way.It's slick enough, the film looks good, and there are a few good set pieces, but there are some things that cannot get out of your head.For instance, when we first meet Longoria, she is metaphorically stalked by an agent who cannot do anything but creepily stare at her, and it really doesn't sit right in the film.So all in all, it's a pretty acceptable thriller, but just perfunctory narrative slightly tarnishes the outcome.

Are you kidding film makers? You assemble a film cast like that and then waste it with weak screenplay. You have Kim but you keep her clothes on! You make Kiefer play the role he has done on 24 for the all this years. Even Michael struggles to give it any tension. Of course it is watchable but in the rush to cram the action in, the detail of the plot is lost. The fun you could have had with the relationship between Kiefer and Eva was just wasted and worst of all where was the believable Baddie? If it is on the box and there is not much else to watch, then give it a try, but I suspect you will end up wondering how this one missed so many memorable moments.

The Sentinel is a crime thriller film about a veteran United States Secret Service bodyguard who is suspected as a traitor after an attempted assassination of the president reveals that someone within the Service is providing information to the assassins.The film stars Michael Douglas as the veteran agent, Kiefer Sutherland as his protégé, Eva Longoria as a rookie Secret Service agent, and Kim Basinger in the role of the First Lady. A man who has devoted himself to serving the leader of the free world is accused of plotting against him in this thriller. Pete Garrison is a veteran Secret Service agent who has had a long and distinguished career helping protect the president of the United States. David Breckinridge is a fellow Secret Service agent who learned most of what he knows from Garrison and holds him in great respect. When intelligence data suggests that there is a mole within the Secret Service who is part of a plot to assassinate President Ballentine, Garrison launches an investigation to ferret out the rogue agent, and asks Breckinridge to go over the evidence with a fine-toothed comb. Breckinridge is shocked when the clues point to Garrison as the traitor within the Secret Service, but his sense of duty compels him to see that his former mentor is placed under arrest. Garrison eludes his captors and struggles to prove his innocence while tracking down the real conspirator and eluding the agents who were once his colleagues. As Breckinridge leads the search for Garrison, another ranking agent, Jill Marin plays devil's advocate, convinced that Garrison couldn't possibly be the rat in the house.It starts off well enough but quickly wears thin with too many plot holes and conventional action sequences.But nevertheless,it has full- tilt suspense mode from beginning to end.

OK Let's see. I watched a movie last night........what was it again??? Oh that's right...The Sentinel. That sentence pretty much sums it all up, unfortunately. In spite of how much I really wanted to like this movie I just could not bring myself to do so.I mean it has Jack Bauer...er... sorry I mean Kiefer Sutherland, Michael Douglas, the lovely Eva Longoria and a host of other recognizable faces including Kim Basinger(as the 1st lady no less) and Martin Donovan. However regardless of all of this it turned out to be an utterly uninspired, predictable and forgettable collection of rehashed moments that seem all too familiar somehow. The blame can in my estimation not be laid at the feet of the principal actors here. Rather an uninspired script and less than adequate direction seems to be the main cause of this failing.Eva Longoria's character gets a good introduction and is then barely heard from again for the remainder of the film. The bad guys' motives are not explored or explained at all other than some poorly contrived nonsense about the former KGB. The character of Douglas' informant seems to have no plausible reason to posses the knowledge he has. There are several missed opportunities and redundancies in the story, and the list just goes on, in short the script was poorly written, predictable and not thought through as well as it really should have been. The mess of sub-plots just become convoluted and a distraction after a while.One could easily be forgiven for comparing "The Sentinel" to "In the line of Fire" which was by far a superior film despite having perhaps a simpler storyline. In short you know what "In The Line Of Fire" was about. It seems that the writer could not decide what "The Sentinel" should really be. Oh Well, next time maybe.....A good idea gone horribly wrong. If you are in the mood for this kind of film rather get hold of a copy of "In The Line Of Fire" with Clint Eastwood or even Kevin Costner in "No Way Out" instead.