The Sentinel

April 21, 2006 - Michael Douglas (Streets of San Francisco), Kiefer Sutherland (24) and Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives) star in this 2006 thriller directed by Clark Johnson (E.N.G., Homicide: Life on the Street). Johnson also has a small role in the film, but his character gets killed early on so he can focus on directing.

Michael Douglas plays Pete Garrison, a Secret Service agent who took a bullet during the Reagan assassination attempt. 25 years later, he's still on the job, protecting President Ballentine and having an affair with the first lady (Kim Basinger).

Sutherland plays Jack Bauer, except that in this movie his name is David Breckenridge and, instead of working for CTU, he's a top investigator at some federal agency that's like the FBI except it's not. Longoria plays his new trainee, who also knows Garrison because he taught some courses at the academy.

When word gets out of a possible plot to assassinate the president, Garrison falls under suspicion. He goes on the run to hunt down the bad guys while Kiefer hunts down Garrison. There's extra tension because Kiefer and Garrison used to be best buds, but then Kiefer got mad because he thought Garrison slept with his wife.

Anyway, everyone eventually ends up in Toronto and the bad guys all get killed.

Overall review: ** Basically, people with a fair amount of TV experience got a fair amount of money to make a fair-enough movie. It's about 90 minutes long, though it seemed longer. Some of the dialogue goes by pretty quickly and you're not sure what it all means. But, that's OK because, soon enough, someone's going to shoot someone and make it all better. Eva Longoria doesn't have a lot to do in this movie, but she does get to shoot a fire extinguisher. Don't be surprised to see a sequel with Garrison coming out of retirement to help Kiefer and Eva save the world.