All the things we associate with presidential assassination attempts rattle around in “The Sentinel.” There is a great deal of code talk: “Classic is in the oval; Cincinnati is leaving the house; agent down.” The movie is peppered with gunshots, so many in fact, that we begin to listen for the sounds of the bad guys’ silencers. Some bullets hit their targets leaving bodies and blood in the streets; others miss and ricochet off metal while people duck and flee. In fact, most of this movie is about ducking and fleeing. People are seen in close up as they drive fast and repeatedly to their destinations; then they dive from the cars and sneak after each other, guns drawn.
If this sounds disconnected, it is. There is no discernible plot, just a noisy jumble of developments. We know what the movie is supposed to be about if it had been written well. Secret Service agent Michael Douglas, who saved President Reagan from the assassin’s bullet, either did or did not have an affair with Secret Service agent Kiefer Sutherland’s wife, so theirs is a shattered friendship. Douglas is now involved in an affair with the wife of the president of the U.S. (Kim Bassinger who is pretty and expressionless) whom he is assigned to protect. If this isn’t a dumb premise, I’ve never heard one.
Douglass is framed as a mole in the Service, a potential assassin who must be brought to ground as he tries to escape. The movie is the search for the real mole. That may sound like fun, but we are given so little connective information that we don’t know anything about the origins and motivations of the heroes and villains. It’s hard to care about someone we know nothing about.
The musical score is entirely out of sync with the movie, overflowing as it is with ominous thumps and soarings that are supposed to underline the action. Instead, it becomes merely confusing because the action and the noise are unrelated.
I cannot quite explain what prejudice within me is being awakened by Michael Douglas’ affair with the wife of the president, but it felt wrongheaded and unattractive considering his professional assignment. When finally he cleans out his desk to walk off into the sunset to the applause of his colleagues, the scene seems crafted as a salute to his manliness and seems nothing less than ridiculous.
One more reservation for this negative litany: do we really need movies about the assassination of the president in the climate of hatred and dissension that has enveloped us? Is it necessary to have someone shoot down the presidential helicopter with a shoulder fired missile? Or to be reminded that the entire federal government is contained within one square mile? It’s not so much that terrorists haven’t thought of these things themselves. It’s that I don’t want to get used to accepting this kind of behavior as ordinary and expected.
Copyright (c) Illusion