The Sentinel (2006)

I hadn't watched this flick for a long time and couldn't really remember it, i thought it was one of those standard decent thrillers, but watching it again had me prove myself wrong.This film is an hour and forty something minutes of running, chasing and people pointing guns at each other along with the clichéd "I was set up, so i have to go on the run and clear my name". The movie has some great talent, but the plot, directing, and editing is not very good, it's just something that we've seen too many times, so with a film that isn't all that at least give us a satisfying ending and have the First Lady divorce the President and leave with Michael Douglas's character, he says at one point in the film that he loves her, she does not really seem happy living that life in The White House, and the final end shot is Michael Douglas's character looking up at the White House top window and then he turns around and walks away/she looks out of the window at him and walks away from the window and that's that, Douglas's character is free and that's good, but him and the First Lady love each other and they cannot be together in the end...i guess that is just how things are sometimes. I wouldn't recommend this film if you want all things to play out well as i did.

Someone reviewed with 'Director should stick with TV movies'. Well guess what he's come up with later .. one of the best rated TV-movies ever, Homeland. What makes a film different from a TV-movie? The time spent on details, sets, castings etc.. Apart from telling a Pulitzer price story The Sentinel has just done that. The casting is superb. At the end of the movie the Presidents reaction when finding out the First Lady is having an affair with the sentinel is not shown, which many find a big miss in the ending. It then indeed drops The Sentinel back to a TV movie, for the average viewer. Clark Johnson could have added a bullshit reason as to why Pete Garrison was sent on his premature retirement. The ending is displayed from the viewpoint of a mid-level security agent, who might never find out in the rest of his career that the Presidents wife was actually having an affair, while being under siege from a couple of Russian terrorists , apparently ex-KGB types who after their organization was disbanded have gone rogue. Again the reason for trying to assassinate the President is not given. Some then claim that because of this the sentinel is a poor movie. I disagree, as the sentinel actually tells a very realistic story, when Walter Xavier is warning Garrison about an upcoming attempt to assassinate the President. What happened is that the Russian terrorists, knowing he's Garrison best informant, started their whole game by approaching Xavier as their first move, which is exactly how these types operate. Again the details of this are not in the movie itself. Does that make it a bad movie ? I disagree.

Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas) was the American secret service agent who once saved the life of president Ronald Reagan. He is now responsible for the security of the current American president Ballentine (David Rasche) and is also having an affair with first lady Sarah Ballentine, convincingly played by Kim Basinger.His informer Walter Xavier (Raynor Scheine) discloses that there is a traitor in the secret service and a plot to kill the president. Garrison's former friend but now competitor David Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland) accompanied by Jill Marin (Eva Longoria), launch an investigation. All the agents are submitted to a polygraph test, which is a bit inconvenient for Garrison, who is found to be untruthful because he is covering up his affair, and he is released from duties under suspicion that he is the traitor. He then follows the well worn path of doing his own investigations while trying to evade his former colleagues. Meanwhile, who is the real mole? So the plot is not bad, acting first rate, sound good, lighting good, camera-work a bit busy. I don't think there's a serious weak point in this film. I am irritated by the lead villain always having to be played by a British actor, but at least it provides them with work and here it's Ritchie Coaster who gets the job. There are plenty of worse films than this around, and it's great to see such excellent performances from the lead actors. I hadn't expected to like this as much as I did. Ultimately it's not Hitchcock, or even The Fugitive, but it's not far off.

Put Michael Douglas in a film and it's only a matter of time before his character's sexual urges lead to mayhem. Here he plays a Secret Service bodyguard tasked with protecting the President. Problem is, Douglas is also having an illicit affair with the First Lady. Cue much confusion.The film adheres to the "running man" formula ("The Fugitive", "Chain Reaction", "The Incredible Hulk", "Minority Report", "The Bourne Identity", "Enemy of the State" etc), which Hitchcock refined in such films as "Saboteur", "Foreign Correspondent", "The 39 Steps" and "North By Northwest". In each case the film's hero is on the run, falsely accused of a crime which he must solve whilst being pursued. The entire "running man" plot is itself a MacGuffin, our hero jumping from set piece to set piece as he attempts to piece together his puzzle.The good thing about this formula is that you don't need expensive set pieces. The plot itself generates tension; the actors need only ride the wave and look confused. In this regard Douglas does well. One minute he's on top the President's wife, the other minute the whole world wants him dead. Poor guy.7.5/10 – Fast paced and pleasantly old school. Watch "The Bodyguard" and "In The Line Of Fire", the latter which features a scenery chewing Clint Eastwood, to see this kind of thing done marginally better.