I could identify the mole in 'The Sentinel' the first time he appeared on camera. Don't you hate it when that happens in a movie?
The Sentinel (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:133
Fresh:44
Rotten:89
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: The Sentinel starts off well enough but quickly wears thin with too many plot holes and conventional action sequences.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for some intense action violence and a scene of sensuality
Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:Apr 21, 2006 Wide
Box Office: $36,226,144
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... 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. --© 20th Century Fox [More]
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Kim Basinger, Michael Douglas, Martin Donovan
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Kim Basinger, Michael Douglas, Martin Donovan, Blair Brown, Ritchie Coster, David Rasche, Eva Longoria
Director: Clark Johnson
Director: Clark Johnson
Screenwriter: George Nolfi
Producer: Michael Douglas, Arnon Milchan, Bill Carraro
Composer: Christophe Beck
Studio: 20th Century Fox
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Reviews for The Sentinel
Working with DP Gabriel Beristain, Johnson shoots the go-nowhere action with an underlit, smudgy color scheme that feels like a poor photocopy of Alejandro González Iñárritu and Fernando Meirelles's signature cinematographic styles.
Without any mystery or twists, all you're left with is a jumble that Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brien could unravel before the first commercial break on a single episode of "24."
Kiefer Sutherland, he's awfully cute and all, but why would anyone pay 10 bucks to see him do what you can see him do for free every week on TV?
If you're going to make a movie with the same title as a second-rate horror film, it should at least be as entertaining as that second-rate horror film.
The Sentinel is not half bad, but it's not nearly as good as it could have been.
It's a competent but charmless, emotionally flat and dull concoction.
Director Clark Johnson ties the elements together efficiently and keeps his film on the move, the settings and Secret Service protocols seem authentic, and the performances by Douglas, Sutherland and Longoria are fine.
A fairly by-the-numbers route through shootings, framings, diabolical plots and lots of dark-suited Secret Service types talking frantically into their shirt cuffs. (Watch closely, and you'll figure out pretty early who the bad seed is.)
If the movie had seized on the purely tacky melodramatic potential of the plot so far -- The Sentinel might have floated above its own silliness on bubbles of pure soap.
Everything about it says efficient, modest, small-screen production except the presence of producer-star Michael Douglas, who may finally have hit the wall of his theatrical leading-man viability.
A half-hearted exercise in political paranoia,The Sentinel unravels its wrong-man scenario with business-like efficiency and an impressively jittery visual scheme, but falls far short of providing visceral or emotional thrills.
So, although some enjoyment can be had from watching The Sentinel with an uncritical eye, it remains a deeply flawed piece of mainstream action entertainment.
A middling picture at best, it reveals some interesting inner workings of the Secret Service. At worst, it plays like a boring night of TV watched at your mom's.
Rife with meaningless hugger-mugger, the movie is no In the Line of Fire.
Director Clark Johnson gives The Sentinel a slick, professional veneer -- visually it resembles Tony Scott's Enemy of the State -- but there's no disguising the story problems.
This is solid genre filmmaking that makes up for a lack of surprises with superior performances, excellent depictions of tradecraft (shades of CSI) and whiplash editing and pacing.
Who ever suspected we would reach a day when a movie looked like a skin-and-bones version of a TV show?
Kiefer Sutherland... plays the Secret Service agent investigating Douglas with the same clenched teeth as Jack Bauer minus the torture scenes.
Latest News for The Sentinel
April 19, 2007:
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May 07, 2006:
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April 24, 2006:
"Silent" is Golden on a Slow Box Office Weekend
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April 20, 2006:
Critical Consensus: A Weak "Sentinel," So-So "Dreamz" Are Made Of This, "Silent Hill" Not Screened
This week at the movies we've got a Secret Service agent on a mission ("The Sentinel"), an "American Idol"- skewering political satire ("American... More...
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