So yesterday I watched this ho-hum political thriller. It got off to a good start with the Twentieth Century Fox logo (surely the best of all the studio logos?) but it was all downhill from there.
The film centres around a conspiracy to kill the President. What do you mean the President of what? The President of the Three Stooges Fan Club, what do you think?! (Splash 1984)
In terms of quality it was somewhere between Clint Eastwood's excellent "In The Line of Fire" and Wesley Snipes dreary "Murder at 1600". Michael Douglas took the lead as a secret service agent who finds himself accused of plotting the assassination. To be honest, he looked too old to be in the secret service and had more make-up on than Kim Basinger who played the President's Wife.
David "Sledgehammer" Rasche was the President and didn't exactly lend gravitas to the role in the way that, say, Morgan Freeman did. I kept expecting him to say "Trust me, I know what I'm doing".
Elsewhere, Kiefer Sutherland took a break from 24 to play exactly the same character here. Eva Longoria was his new rookie agent, criticised by Sutherland for her choice of wardrobe. I think he was concerned that her fellow agents would be distracted during a raid as they checked out the curves of her cleavage rather than the corners of the room.
The plot focussed so much on the agent character played by Douglas that the villains were completely marginalised. Consequently, there was no real sense of threat. It was also lacking the kind of conspiracy that you'd expect from this kind of film. I was hoping for Basinger to be involved somehow but no. Everything was wrapped up far too conveniently and you were left wondering what the point of it all was.
Douglas' character made it through to the end and all was forgiven, whereby he promptly retired. No doubt he will end up in Fort Lauderdale, wandering round shopping malls looking for the ultimate soft yoghurt and muttering "how comes the kids don't call?" (City Slickers 1991)
HoganMonkey gives The Sentinel a five out of ten on the banana scale
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