- Jesus! The First Lady?
- Yeah, I know.

About 15 minutes into The Sentinel I started having high hopes for it. It's a movie about how there's some mole in the secret service who is somehow involved in a plot to kill the president. Michael Douglas is also in the secret service, and very unwisely banging the first lady. Douglas get's ID'd as the possible mole because refuses to tell the truth about the affair, but people know something is up. This is a totally preposterous scenario that the movie generally handles poorly.

What the movie does really well is give us some insight into the crazy amount of work that happens behind the scenes to provide security for the President. This was really interesting for me and well done. But then the plot started and the whole thing started to go downhill.

This is one of those movies where all the characters' actions and their motivations seem to be entirely dictated by what the plot needs them to do. The Michael Douglas/Kiefer Southerland relationship is perhaps the worst offender (besides the ridiculous notion that the whole first lady affair could happen.) Also, when the mole is eventually revealed there's no background or depth to it all - and it just feels like a silly plot device.

And I'm showing concentrated restraint to keep from rattling off the security mistakes the secret service people make in the final act when things get ugly.

This was a relatively short movie, that was sometimes choppily cut. It felt to me like the original version was about 20 minutes longer, and those 20 minutes were almost entirely character interaction and development. Maybe with all of the characters would have made more sense, but I don't think that would have salvaged the movie.

Overall the biggest problem with The Sentinel is it started out feeling like it was a smart movie, but couldn't sustain that. That's a bummer, because I'd love to see a smart movie about the secret service (I should go watch In the Line of Fire again, I think that's the best I'll do.)

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