‘Sentinel’ should sell popcorn

Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

They don’t call them “police procedurals” for nothing. In a movie like “The Sentinel,” procedure is everything.

The tapping of phones. The analyzing of fingerprints. The obsessive gazing into computer screens as databases are accessed and bytes of evidence are mined. It’s the procedure, the process of digging and scratching for clues and figuring out whodunit or who’s soon going to be doing it (bad things, always bad things), that turns the crank of these sorts of pictures.

“The Sentinel” is a perfectly adequate crank-turner. It’s reasonably exciting and serviceably acted. Nothing special, surely, but with a couple of hours to spare and a tub of popcorn on your lap, you could do worse.

It’s got a few twists up its sleeve, the main one being that someone in the Secret Service wants to knock off the president, and Kiefer Sutherland thinks Michael Douglas is the dirty rotten assassin-in-waiting. Nothing is being given away here; the trailer is built around this angle.

Sutherland is a hard-eyed, hard-guy Secret Service investigator who gets to wave his pistol around a lot and rasp out angry questions at sweaty suspects. Any similarities between this guy and “24’s” Jack Bauer are wholly unavoidable, given the nature of the roles.

The guy he’s grilling is a respected veteran agent played by Douglas who’s something of a legend in the service, having taken a bullet – well, several actually – for President Reagan during the 1981 assassination attempt by John Hinckley.

Nowadays, he’s the head of the first lady’s security detail, a job made pleasant by the fact that the presidential spouse is played by Kim Basinger.

Some people have all the luck. But not Douglas’ character, Pete Garrison, because a stool pigeon has been singing a tune to the effect that the service has been infiltrated by a mole, and all the evidence points to poor old Pete.

He’d like to defend himself, really he would. But his effort to clear his name is complicated by the fact he happens to be guilty of a big fat professional no-no and so can’t come completely clean with his colleagues.

Cat-and-mouse moves ensue, with Pete using his insider knowledge to stay one step ahead of his pursuers at every step of the way.

Several shootouts ensue, with the climactic gun battle being as spectacular as it is utterly unbelievable, given the supposedly ultrasecure bubble the service routinely erects around the president.

Plot holes of increasing width and depth yawn in the late going.

The picture is directed with mechanistic efficiency by Clark Johnson, otherwise known to fans of the late, lamented “Homicide: Life on the Street” for his portrayal of porkpie hat-wearing Detective Meldrick Lewis.

Oh, and Eva Longoria is on hand for … well, hard to say. Certainly not eye candy, though the camera briefly ogles derriere and Sutherland orders her to cover up her cleavage.

As a rookie agent, she gets to rap out boilerplate dialogue and look stern. She doesn’t embarrass herself, but almost any actress could have played the part just as well.

The Sentinel

Director: Clark Johnson

Cast: Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, Kim Basinger, Eva Longoria and Martin Donovan

Running Time: 1:45

Rating: PG-13; violence, language, sexual situations