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The Sentinel (2006)
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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.
Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
US 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
Reviews for The Sentinel
Michael Douglas might have been hired for the star power he could bring for a good opening weekend [but] it's . . . Kiefer Sutherland who walks off with the film
The plot reassembles elements from In the Line of Fire, The Fugitive, and a dozen other films, but the result feels impressively fresh.
It's a sleek piece of entertainment with attractive performers who deliver exactly what's expected of them.
The Sentinel's brains may be mush, but its brawn is powered by superb stunts, high-tech gizmos and a potent sense of peril.
A routine yet diverting political thriller ... if it doesn't reach new moviemaking heights, that's probably because it's not aiming for them.
It gets harder to believe the more the movie goes along, but it's exciting action and it's entertaining, so who cares if plausibility is stretched to the breaking point and beyond.
It's a competent, if forgettable and implausible, thriller with some decent acting on the part of Sutherland and Michael Douglas as Secret Service agents.
And that's really the point here: The Sentinel is about boys, bonding, squabbling, scheming, running, and shooting. Shooting a lot.
There was one thing that was way better than anything on "24," though. Her name: Eva Longoria.
...the movie equivalent of the book you pick up to read at the beach or on a long airplane flight.
Douglas possesses an everyman appeal that is used to good effect in this movie to keep the audience securely on his side.
There's nothing flashy about The Sentinel, but there doesn't need to be.
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.
The story and style fit comfortably with today's TV and movie fashions: the cop procedural, kinetic editing, a pressure-cooker job rife with competition, and a countdown to possible disaster.
Gives a good name to the brand of cookie-cutter thriller that satisfies like no other.
Decent, but nothing special, as an entertaining time killer and as a kind of ode to the U.S. Secret Service.
Latest News for The Sentinel
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May 07, 2006:
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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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