Uaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!

A bowl of pasta makes more sense than this!

“Kiefer Sutherland” and “Michael Douglas” act as David and Pete, two colleagues in the Secret Service whose job is to protect the president. They have had a rough past, as David slept with Pete’s wife. “Eva Longoria’s” purpose is nothing more than to market this movie for teenagers, she cannot act for shit and is useless. Pete is now sleeping with the first lady, cheating on the president. He gets word from an informant of his that there is a mole in the Secret Service, and that there will be an assassination attempt on the president. Not surprisingly, Pete is framed for being the mole, he escapes to prove his innocence, and toward the end he is cleared and joins up with David again to pursue the real threat. The story is as standard and square as it can get, chances are you have seen this kind of shit more than ten times before.

“Clark Johnson” is another TV-to-movie director who has had little success in his new department (his only other movie is “S.W.A.T.”), and “The Sentinel” proves that this guy should stick with TV. He keeps filming all over the place, using effects which seems weird at the time they are used, like shaking the camera around in a small circle, frequently zooming in on objects that has nothing to do with the story or the characters, not to mention that the cutting is awful. Every other second the movie changes to another angle or a different scene. This happens pretty much constantly during the movie, which practically makes it unwatchable. The director has also tried to press as much action into the one-and-a-half hour that it lasts. The result is that one second we find the characters having a discussion in the White House, then in a matter of seconds we see them chatting in a helicopter. This happens all the time, and on a quite illogical and irregular basis.

There are many other reasons why this movie entirely sucks. For one, the dialogue is plain boring and uninteresting, there is nothing more than superficial Secret Service-wannabe talk in half of it. Another reason is the horrible, horrible musical score rolling in the background. It sounds like we are in some cheap disco, and it does not try to elevate the dramatic moments, or anything at all for that matter. Ultimately it is the bad cinematography which ruins this movie. Because of it, there is really no way to empathise with the characters on the screen. There is no atmosphere in the movie, no tension, and practically no dramatic moments.

It was torture to watch this movie, which should have been brought straight to DVD.