The Sentinel Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

The Sentinel Blu-ray Movie Review

'The Sentinel?' Huh? I just watched it? Pardon me, I'd already forgotten.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman September 10, 2008

He knows how you think, he knows what you know, and he knows how you operate, and he will use that against you.

The three Secret Service movies that come immediately to mind (and all available on Blu-ray) share one thing in common: the protagonist agents are middle-aged men who have previously been in the middle of a Presidential assassination attempt. In Vantage Point, Dennis Quaid portrays an agent recently shot and just returning to work for sentinel duty at a terrorism summit in Madrid. His re-emergence causes a brief media frenzy before the movie's primary plot gets underway. In the Line of Fire, probably the best Secret Service agent movie (so noted because of the presence of John Malkovich who plays the perfect bad guy and because the always-reliable Wolfgang Peterson helmed the project), features an agent portrayed by Clint Eastwood. Haunted by his failure to protect John F. Kennedy, Eastwood's character now faces a new threat, an assassin bent on harming the current President. In The Sentinel, Michael Douglas portrays an agent who took a bullet during the attempt on Ronald Reagan's life and has gained a sort of cult following among the younger members of the Secret Service. I suppose there are not too many angles one could take in a Secret Service movie, but if I think of any, I'll be sure to write the script and get it made so we don't have to deal with movies like The Sentinel anymore, movies without even an ounce of originality, suspense, or excitement.

Yea, it's a swell car. You should see the airplane they gave me!

The Sentinel is the tale of a Secret Service Agent named Pete Garrison (Douglas) who is framed as a mole working on the inside and aiding in what what will be an attempt on the President's life during the G8 summit in Toronto. When Garrison's colleague, Charlie Merriweather (Clarque Johnson, S.W.A.T.), is assassinated and Garrison comes privy to evidence that his death is connected to a threat on the President's life, he becomes the number one suspect and finds himself on the run from a pair of investigators, David Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland, TV's "24") and Jill Marin (Eva Longoria, TV's "Desperate Housewives"). Using his honed skills and cunning, Garrison must elude his fellow agents long enough to clear his name and discover the identity of the real mole and spoil the attempt on the President's life.

The Sentinel is a movie that just "is." They don't come much more pre-packaged and ready for immediate consumption as this one. With two popular male leads to drive the plot and the action, a pair of attractive female co-stars who play rather generic roles, and plenty of gunplay, the movie is tailor-made for a young male audience that consume this genre of movies like they were Red Bulls and pizza. The movie is also packed with an assortment of fancy Secret Service speak, but we have no way of knowing if it really means anything or if it is just gibberish that sounds good because it is spoken by Keifer Sutherland and Michael Douglas. We'll hear a character rattling off the most commonly driven cars in the D.C. area or using code names for the President ("Classic") and the First Lady ("Cincinnati"), for example. There is also an abundance of MacGyver-like spy scenarios and clever implementations of technology. Plenty of training and gun talk is included, although there is a noticeable gaffe in describing the standard-issue Sig Sauer Secret Service pistol as having an external safety that can be "flicked" on and off; the models seen throughout the movie have no such feature. The Sentinel is a slickly-written, "savvy" movie, but at the end of the day much of the information we become privy to seems rather superfluous and doesn't add all that much authenticity. This is in part because some of it is clearly incorrect (such as the gun error), and partly because the movie, as is, comes off as so bland and cookie-cutter that all the tech- and inside- speak in the world can't really save it from being so terribly mediocre.

Another problem the film has is that it dares to be incredibly conventional. We know all along that Douglas' character isn't the bad guy. We can also spot the real mole a mile away. Why not drop out of convention and make someone we really don't expect to be the bad guy? Why not have the bad guys win for a change? As we take every step with the characters, as we learn about their pasts, their angles, and their relationships with one another, we know how all will be resolved by the end of the film. The Sentinel telegraphs its every move and leaves any semblance of suspense out of the story. We get to know the characters. We discover the plot. A primary character becomes the suspect and goes on the run. He proves his innocence. A shootout ensues where the bad guys are killed and everyone lives happily ever after. Oh sorry, did I just spoil it for you? No worries. You can figure it out by looking at the front cover and reading the synopsis on the back of the box, let alone sitting down and watching the first twenty minutes of the movie. None of the actors do much to make it any better, either. Michael Douglas practically sleepwalks through his role, Keifer Sutherland seems to be in Jack Bauer mode, Kim Basinger is dull, and Eva Longoria is a pretty face who plays a character that is nothing more than dead weight that can barely hold up the pistol she carries. Christophe Beck's (We Are Marshall) score is all that saves the film; it's taut and tense, creating some "exciting" scenes, and with little to no help from the action on-screen.

The Sentinel Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Sentinel fails to protect Blu-ray's high standards thanks to its incredibly wishy-washy 1080p, MPEG-2 encoded, 2.40:1 framed transfer. The beginning of the movie sports a rather nice, crisp image featuring some beautiful locations around Washington, D.C. that look great on Blu-ray, but only upon first glance. It's mostly downhill from there. The transfer is terribly inconsistent. It never looks amazing, and it never looks awful, but it fluctuates between subpar and average almost literally from shot to shot. Medium and long distance shots have a definite softness about them, but close-ups generally fare rather well. Colors appear a little warm in some shots, but in others, there is a paleness to the image. Contrast seems to be all over the map. Flesh tones also veer from anywhere between ghostly-pale to bright red. Fine detail is minimal, and some objects look smeared in the background, such as clusters of green foliage. The transfer is generally flat and uninteresting. Black levels are solid and are probably the most consistently good aspect of the transfer. The Sentinel on Blu-ray offers no good reason to screen the disc from a visual perspective. Can the audio save the experience?

The Sentinel Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Featuring a DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless soundtrack, The Sentinel's one strong suits is in its audio presentation. While neither explosive nor underwhelming, the track definitely winds up much closer to "explosive" than it does "underwhelming." There are some good atmospherics placed all over the soundstage, such as the sounds of radio chatter in chapter four as Breckinridge and Marin arrive on a murder scene, or when we hear a myriad of threats to the President playing all at once over certain scenes. Bass is integral to the score, and there are some thumps in the track that slightly reverberate your chair, but having experienced better audio sequences so many times over the past year, this one barely raised a blip on my audio radar. Gun shots, however, crack out with nice effect, particularly in the film's finale, where a barrage of gunfire, taking place in close interior quarters no less, lends some nice effects to the audio experience. Dialogue is mostly fine, though there were a few instances during the film where I had to strain to hear exactly what was going on. The Sentinel does little to distinguish itself in the audio department, but it never comes off as an embarrassment, either.

The Sentinel Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Sentinel comes to Blu-ray with a set of supplements that is perhaps the very definition of "average," both in quality and quantity, a perfect compliment to an unexceptional movie. A feature commentary track with director Clark Johnson and screenwriter George Nolfi gets us started, and like so many commenting on 20th Century Fox releases before them, the track begins with a comment on the studio's famous fanfare. This duo proves more interesting than the actual film, discussing more of the intricacies of the Secret Service (and how, "God forbid," they would have to step in front of George W. Bush and take a bullet for him were they in the Secret Service). They talk about some artistic licenses taken for dramatic effect, some movie conventions seen in the film (good guys with handguns defeating bad guys with automatic rifles), filming in Toronto, and more. There are some boring pauses in the discussion, but it does make for a decent listen overall.

Three "interactive features" are next. Secret Service Intel Feed is a standard pop-up trivia track that runs over the length of the film, providing information on numerous aspects of the movie, from historical footage seen at the beginning, to the effectiveness of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. Making Of...The Mall Scene and Making Of...G8 Summit Toronto plays behind-the-scenes footage side-by-side with the final filmed product. Viewers can select three audio tracks: the final audio, the final audio without music, and the audio accompanying the behind-the-scenes footage. Next up is a feature entitled The Secret Service (480p, 13:00). This feature looks at the work of the Secret Service, its history, what the organization looks for in its recruits, the training they undergo, and a look at the technical advisors who worked on the film. In the President's Shadow (480p, 7:37) takes a closer look at the hard work that being a Secret Service agent entails, and the process of getting onto Presidential protection detail. Rounding out the special features are five deleted scenes (480p, 11:43) with optional screenwriter commentary and the film's theatrical trailer (1080p, 2:01).

The Sentinel Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Sentinel is far from being a terrible movie. However, the film lacks originality in that it introduces paper-thin characters, provides predictable angles and character arcs, and relies on a transparent script, all of which when combined make for a completely uninteresting two hours. There is plenty of action and dialogue that tries its hardest to make up for the thin plot, but it comes off as just trying to save a bland, "been there, done that" story from being so ordinary that it just might walk away with the "most nondescript movie of all time" award. Fox's Blu-ray release of this easily forgettable film is equally bland. Featuring an underwhelming video presentation, a very average lossless audio track, and a selection of supplements straight out of the extras-o-matic, there just isn't much to like about this release. The Sentinel is another movie only worth renting -- and only if you have exhausted 90% of the other available options.