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Sentinel, The
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation


5.9

based on 31 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 26 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

S.W.A.T.

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some intense action violence and a scene of sensuality

Starring Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, Kim Basinger, Eva Longoria, David Rasche, Raoul Bhaneja, Simon Reynolds, and Danny A. Gonzales

Special Agent Pete Garrison is convinced that a Neo-Nazi Aryan Disciple has managed to infiltrate the White House. When a White House Agent is murdered, Garrison is framed and blackmailed over an affair with the First Lady. Garrison is relieved of his duties, but he won't stop trying to prove his innocence, or giving his all to save the life of the President.

GENRE(S):	Crime \| Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	George Nolfi Gerald Petievich (novel)
DIRECTED BY:	Clark Johnson
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 29, 2006 Theatrical: April 21, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	105 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Michael Douglas plays US Secret Service agent Pete Garrison, and his jaw has never seemed tighter.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is encouraging that well-crafted thrillers are still being made about characters who have dialogue, identities, motives and clean shirts.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Implausible yet enjoyably diverting thriller.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A well-constructed and genuinely tense thriller.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

An unassuming thriller, a nifty piece of genre filmmaking without frills or self-importance. It's a throwback, if you will, to the days of B pictures, when formula movies were made with a maximum of skill and a minimum of pretense.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Director Clark Johnson has an energetic style of filmmaking and a facile way with stunts and chase sequences. The result is a fairly stylish action thriller. We've seen plenty of suspense films in which a seemingly good guy is framed, so it helps when a director can pull off a few cinematic tricks to keep audiences on their toes.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Director Clark Johnson and screenwriter George Nolfi (adapting the novel by Gerald Petievich) do an excellent job of setting things up and getting the story underway. Unfortunately, some of their hard work is undone during the movie's final third.

Premiere Jessica Letkemann

Ultimately all of the ado about men in shades and dark suits running around shooting and shouting at each other comes to a satisfying, if predictable, conclusion.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

A slick enough thriller about a presidential assassination attempt. It is also a rather mechanical, soulless affair that avoids politics or anything else that might clearly define who these characters are and why we should care.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

No, it's not the big screen version of "24." For one thing, Sutherland is in the wrong role.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

The Sentinel moves quickly and never becomes a bore. It does become something of a cartoon, though, which proves a major letdown for a movie that aims for something far more intelligent.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

We have reached a point in history when an ordinary TV show is often as good as or even better than an ordinary movie. And movies don't come much more ordinary than The Sentinel.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

A contrived and tepid thriller that insists on wanting to interest us in its main plot -- the usual nefarious plan to assassinate the leader of the free world.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Douglas and Sutherland do crackling hostility with devilish glee, and the fireworks are nothing if not entertaining.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The Sentinel isn't an entire season of ''24" smushed into a bland two hours of movie? Does Kiefer Sutherland know?

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The movie gives away its shifty-eyed villain almost immediately. What it doesn't give away is why he betrayed his trust, who wants the president dead or what they hope to gain by killing him.

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

The Sentinel isn't nearly as slick as it must have looked on the page. Those zingers are perfect fodder for a movie preview, but they just don't lead anywhere interesting on-screen.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Eva Longoria brings a crisp swagger and fluent Spanish to her role.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Director Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T.) has a flair for action, which compensates for the flattening effect of Gabriel Beristain's cinematography.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

Always an intriguing (though sometimes unpolished) actress, Basinger has softened the rough edges over the years to become an extremely watchable performer who deserves better roles than those in which she appears onscreen.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Sentinel works overtime to suggest what a thrill-a-minute world its characters inhabit; but only during the last 20 minutes does the movie's pulse (or ours) raise above a flatline. The actors look uniformly unhappy to be there - except for Basinger, who seems lost in a lithium haze.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Amid the nervousness Douglas and Sutherland do what they can to enliven their warring stereotypes. And now and then, blessedly, The Sentinel nudges toward camp.

Variety Justin Chang

A half-hearted exercise in political paranoia, The Sentinel unravels its wrong-man scenario with business-like efficiency and an impressively jittery visual scheme, but falls far short of providing visceral or emotional thrills.

New York Post Kyle Smith

The Sentinel is so bland that it wants only to be as good as TV. Not as good as good TV, like "24." It merely aspires to be the Regis Philbin of D.C. thrillers. It isn't trying to dazzle you with style, complexity or intelligence.

Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling

Looking back, 1993 was a golden age for thriller cinema. That was the year Hollywood hatched both "In the Line of Fire" and "The Fugitive," the two obvious and way superior antecedents for the very humdrum B-movie mash-up The Sentinel.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Plays like a 108 minute episode of Hawaii 5-0, minus the exotic locale.

Slate Grady Hendrix

The screenwriters seem to have meticulously researched the inner workings of the White House by watching DVDs of "The West Wing," but, despite their hard work, casting sinks the film. With Longoria and Sutherland onboard it feels like an uneasy marriage of "24" and "Desperate Housewives."

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Sentinel is a medium-dumb thriller that starts out with momentary promise but gets progressively sillier.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

The question is why. Why would a star of Michael Douglas's stature and intelligence attach himself to a Washington thriller as deeply ridiculous, suspense-free and potentially career-damaging as The Sentinel?

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

I can't find much slack to cut the film, except to say that it's a potboiler cooked in an upscale Teflon pot.

Village Voice Bill Gallo

Brought low by its premise and rendered idiotic by its subplot, this alleged political thriller spells momentary doom for star Michael Douglas.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.9 (out of 10) based on 26 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Tony B gave it a4:
Done before and done much better as well, "The Sentinel" is of little interest and even less importance. True, I wasn't bored, but probably because I was trying to fill in some of the plot's many holes.

Paul O. gave it a7:
I thought it was pretty good. The ending, on the other hand, was not so great. Just a mess of an ending. I don't know what JG is talking about. He must either be 8 years old or drunk because I understood the whole movie. Maybe rent it if you can't find anything else.

Brad C gave it a2:
Bad movie. Went in thinking I would see something intelligent and all it was was Hollywood tripe.

Michael O. gave it an8:
I actually thought it was a good movie! I was on the edge of my seat. Makes me want to join the secret service! I thought there was a little cliche because you could tell who the mole was in this movie about half way through! ;) There should have been more people suspect.

J G gave it a3:
It was pretty messy. About 3/4 of the way into the movie I said to myself "What just happened?". Everybody I was all over the place, the secret service agents pull the safety off there guns differently from the cops, the guy is good then bad, then good again. Just a pure mess with a few parts I understood.

Chad S. gave it a4:
An assasination plot against the president is exciting in theory but "The Sentinel" never really gets going. We never really learn why the commander-in-chief has to die, which might very well be the problem. Is President Ballentine(David Rasche) a democrat or republican? "The Sentinel" seems more concerned with rekindling our memories of Michael Douglas' past sex addiction problem.

Dana M. gave it an8:
Entertaining. After all isn't that why we go to the movies? Still, some holes in the plot exist. Like, who took the incriminating photos, who killed the snitch, etc? But still fun.

Sentinel, The Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Sentinel, The
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation