Movie Review Flatliners

Flatlines (2017) 

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev

Written by Ben Ripley 

Starring Elliot Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons, Kiefer Sutherland

Release Date September 29th, 207 

Flatliners is a remarkably bad movie. I love Elliot Page; he is a very compelling and charismatic actor. Why has he been marginalized so much that he felt she needed to make this bizarrely dumb movie? What compelled him and the very talented director Niels Arden Oplev, director of the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to think this movie was a good idea? Why did anyone think that remaking a movie as bad as the original Flatliners was a good idea? The Joel Schumaker directed 1990 Flatliners is a terrible movie and somehow this version manages to be worse than that. I’m baffled.

Flatliners stars Eliot Page as Courtney, a medical student who is plagued by the memory of the death of her younger sister in an accident that was her fault. Nine years after the accident Courtney has become consumed by the idea of knowing whether or not there is an afterlife where she might atone for her sin. Wanting to know about the afterlife she conceives of an experiment where she will have fellow med students stop her heart and let her die for a few minutes before bringing her back with the secrets of death.

Joining Courtney for the experiment is Sophia (Kiersey Clemons) and Jamie (James Norton) a trust fund kid who Courtney assumes is just reckless enough to go along with the plan. Dragged into the experiment are Ray (Diego Luna) and Marlo (Nina Dobrev) who jump in when Sophia and Jamie struggle to bring Courtney back to life. If you bought into the idea that Courtney might not come back after her first Flatline you might just be the audience for this movie. The complete lack of suspense in this scene doesn’t prevent lots of heavy breathing and forced tension.

Of course, Courtney must come back to life because her subsequent hallucinations are the source of most of the film’s jump scares. Courtney decides to keep the jump-scare-itis she contracted from flatlining to herself and when Jamie sees her thriving, answering difficult questions, relearning how to play the piano, as if her brain has been rewired by flatlining, he decides he must do it next. The film again must give us the forced fake tension of whether he’s going to come back or not. He does and then it’s party montage time because the last thing this movie needs is to do anything we can’t predict.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Classic Movie Review The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys (1987)

Directed by Joel Schumacher

Written by Janice Fischer, Jeffrey Boam, James Jeremias

Starring Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Dianne Wiest, Jamie Gertz

Release Date July 31st, 1987

The Lost Boys turns 30 years old this weekend, July 28th, 2017, and the movie has not aged well. While it’s not quite the embarrassment that was the Twilight movies, The Lost Boys is bad in its own unique ways. While nostalgia might cloud fans of the Coreys’ first team up (Haim and Feldman for those aren’t fans of Tiger Beat circa 1987) the reality of The Lost Boys is that director Joel Schumacher is an epically bad filmmaker and teamed with a cast of not ready for primetime teenagers, and a minimal budget, Schumacher’s modest talents are entirely overwhelmed.

The story of The Lost Boys began life as a kid’s adventure movie surrounding the bizarre idea of Peter Pan as a vampire, explaining why he was always a teenager, and attempting to lure Michael, eventually played by non-child Jason Patrick, and his brother Sam (Corey Haim) to become one of his "Lost Boys" hence the title that seems confusing minus the Peter Pan story. The Peter Pan aspect was ditched when director Richard Donner bolted from the project for the chance to direct Lethal Weapon. (Why did they keep the name? It means nothing without… oh never mind.)

In the story, as it plays out in the finished film, Michael and Sam have moved to Santa Carla from Phoenix after their mother, played by Dianne Wiest, divorced her husband and lost her job. They are going to live with their eccentric grandfather, played by the perfectly cast Barnard Hughes, who specialized in playing oddball grandpas. Hughes is one of the many extraneous idiocies of The Lost Boys as his character is little more than a series of creepy, supposedly endearing, quirks that have nothing to do with the plot.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: The Wild

The Wild (2006) 

Directed by Steve Williams

Written by Ed Decter, John J. Strauss, Mark Gibson

Starring Kiefer Sutherland, Jim Belushi, Eddie Izzard, Janeane Garofalo, William Shatner

Release Date April 14th, 2006

Published April 14th, 2006 

For people familiar with the not so amicable divorce of Jeffrey Katzenberg from Disney, the new animated film The Wild is a bit of a humorous inside joke. A joke Disney, you can be sure, is not laughing at. Katzenberg was the number 2 man at Disney, right behind Michael Eisner, in the early nineties. He is said to have been responsible for relaunching Disney's moribund animation division by championing The Lion King amongst others.

When Katzenberg was forced out and ended up founding Dreamworks with Steven Speilberg and David Geffen, he had a bit of revenge on his mind. Hence, in his time as the head of Dreamworks animation an odd pattern of copying emerged.

In Katzenberg's first post Disney animated launch Katzenberg chose Antz to lead off the new Dreamworks division. An odd choice considering Katzenberg was well aware of Disney's long in development animated film A Bugs Life, courtesy of Disney partner Pixar.

From there the pattern continued, Disney/Pixar release Finding Nemo, D'works is out soon after with Shark's Tale. And then last year Katzenberg pulled the ultimate coup when he released D'Works zoo escape adventure Madagascar ahead of Disney's long in development The Wild, a picture that was in the planning stages late in Katzenberg's own Disney run.

The Wild is Disney's first foray into computer animation without the imprimatur of the geniuses at Pixar and thanks in part to Madagascar the film not only feels like a cheap knockoff it tanked at the box office like one too. Somewhere Jeffrey Katzenberg is smiling.

Kiefer Sutherland leads the voice cast of The Wild as Samson whose massive road has made him the featured attraction at the New York City Zoo. Unfortunately, Samson's son Ryan (Greg Cipes) can't seem to get his roar going beyond a weak meow. Having spent his entire life listening to his dad's stories about fighting wildebeests in the wilds of the jungle, Ryan longs to go to the wild himself to find his roar and capture some glory of his own.

Ryan gets his chance when he spots a cargo hold being loaded on a truck that he is certain is headed for The Wild. When Samson finds his son on a truck headed for the harbor he and his pals, including Benny The Squirrel (Jim Belushi), Nigel the koala (Eddie Izzard), Bridget the giraffe (Janeane Garofalo) and Larry the snake (Richard Kind) give chase and have a grand adventure in the streets of New York before commandeering a tugboat and taking off after Ryan to the Wilds of Africa.

The stories of The Wild and Madagascar are similar but not the same. Yet it cannot be denied that the creative team at Dreamworks was well aware of Disney's competing project which was in production even before Madagascar. Nevertheless most will see The Wild as a rehash of the story from Madagascar and they are not entirely wrong.

Both stories jump off from the premise of Zoo animals escaping their cage confines and heading out to adventure in the jungle. Both feature lions as lead characters, Kiefer Sutherland taciturn and authoritative in The Wild and Ben Stiller freewheeling yet neurotic in Madagascar. Both feature giraffes as second leads with Janeane Garofalo evincing a smart sexy giraffe in The Wild to David Schwimmer's laconic dopey giraffe in Madagascar.

The main difference between the two films is the switch from Chris Rock as an ascerbic energetic zebra in Madagascar and Eddie Izzard as the wildly improvised koala in The Wild. Otherwise the films play along very similar storylines.

Try to decide whether one of these two animated flicks is better than the other is really a question of taste. Madagascar appeals to fans of broad comedy while The Wild sticks closer to a family adventure vibe with Eddie Izzard providing the occasional comic jolt with his ad libbing.

I prefer Madagascar because I just could not buy the voice of Kiefer Sutherland as Samson in The Wild. All I could hear was Jack Bauer, Sutherland's iconic TV badas, coming out of the animated mouth of a lion. When Sutherland is called on to be playful or broadly comic he comes off as stern and a little angry. His line deliveries are staccato, forced and halting, not unlike Jack Bauer's tight lipped hyper authoritative line readings on 24.

Jack Bauer simply cannot play cute and cuddly and because of that I found The Wild to be more uncomfortable than humorous.

Directed by special effects specialist Steve Spaz Williams, best know for Jim Carrey's cartoon histrionics in The Mask, The Wild has uniquely realistic look that definitely looks complicated. The hard work of the Disney animators is all up there on the screen for all to see in the couple of hundred thousand individually drawn hairs on each of the animal characters.

Complicated however, is a far cry from elegant or beautiful and like all other non-pixar computer animated films, The Wild pales in comparison to the remarkable works of art that are The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc.

Even without the thievery of Madagascar I would not be recommending The Wild, a family animated adventure that is lacking in big laughs and adventure.

Movie Review: Beat

Beat (2000) 

Directed by Gary Walkow 

Written by Gary Walkow 

Starring Norman Reedus, Kiefer Sutherland, Courtney Love, Kyle Secor, Ron Livingston 

Release Date January 29th, 2000 

Published October 29th, 2002 

Knowing little more than the names of the Beat poets of the 1950's I was intrigued to see a film that I assumed would shed some light on the work and motivation of what has been called the golden age of American poetry. Instead, with the drama, Beat, we get a very short and at times quite dull love story involving bland secondary characters who rotate around the poets one would expect the film to focus on.

Beat stars Courtney Love as Joanie Burroughs, the wife of William S. Burroughs, whose death at his hands in 1951 is said to be what launched William S. Burroughs' best work. Burroughs is played by Kiefer Sutherland, in what amounts to an extended cameo. His Burroughs spends most of the film pursuing an off camera affair with another man. In 1951, the Burroughs are living in Mexico as William ducks a heroin conviction in New York. Here, they are visited by a pair of old friends, Allen Ginsburg (Ron Livingston) and Lucien Carr (Norman Reedus). Their aim for their trip is to convince Joan to come back to New York with or without William. Lucien is in love with Joan and sees William's cheating as his opportunity to steal her away.

While one might expect a film about poets to be very talky, not much more than talking happens in Beat, though not the kind of talking you would hope for. I was hoping to hear poetry, but, for a film that features William S. Burroughs, Allan Ginsburg and alludes to a character playing Jack Kerouac, there is surprisingly little poetry. Livingston is also the film's narrator and, at times, he does riff, but those riffs are abbreviated. Most of the film consists of discussions about Lucien having been released from jail after murdering a gay friend (Homicide's Kye Secor), who tried to get a little too close. Reedus's Lucien is often referred to as the catalyst of the New York poetry scene, though he does not seem to compose much (if any) poetry. His place in history is not well known.

The film's ending, also portrayed in the Burroughs adaptation Naked Lunch, is tragic but not unexpected. Anyone familiar with Burroughs' history knows this actually happened. Whether or not the incident portrayed followed so closely after a visit by Carr and Ginsburg is unclear. Most of the film is an allusion to events as they may have happened, implying the reason and motivations.

Clocking in at a slim 67 minutes, Beat begins with little narrative momentum and runs out of it quickly. The film has no story, and what's worse, it has some of the most fascinating people of the last half-century but doesn't portray them doing what they do best. A movie about poets with little or no poetry... whose idea was this? 

Movie Review Mirrors

Mirrors (2008) 

Directed by Alexandre Aja 

Written by Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseure

Starring Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart

Release Date August 15th, 2008 

Published August 14th, 2008 

The fact is, Kiefer Sutherland is forever his 24 character Jack Bauer. Blessing or curse? That is for Sutherland himself to decide. Regardless, Jack Bauer is a pop culture icon and sitting down to watch Kiefer Sutherland pretend not to be Jack Bauer in the new horror flick Mirrors, I got just what I expected, a Kiefer/Jack head down, eyes forward badass with a purpose This works for Jack Bauer, not so much for Ben Carter the protagonist of Mirrors whose Jackism prevents him from connecting emotionally in the ways necessary to deepen the puddle deep ambitions director Alexandre Aja brings to Mirrors.

Based on a 2003 Korean original, Mirrors stars Kiefer Sutherland as the new night watchman at a burnt out old department store where only the mirrors seem to have survived the blaze that killed 40 some people, some years earlier. It is not long after accepting the job that Ben begins to notice something strange about all of those oddly pristine mirrors

The mirrors in fact not only reflect reality but have a reality of their own for anyone looking at them. On one of his first nights in the store, Ben nearly burns to death as a mirror shows him covered in flames. There are no flames but the pain feels real. Of course it could have something to do with the pills Ben is taking to overcome a drinking problem. Is psychosis a side effect?

As all of this is happening at work, Ben is trying to win back the love of his wife Amy (Paula Patton) who threw him out of their home because of his drinking. The couple has two kids that Ben still see's but Amy is resistant to him returning, especially after he starts babbling about the mirrors coming to life and trying to kill him.

That is a determinedly vague description of the plot of Mirrors. Even though I didn't like the movie, I don't want to ruin it for those inclined to see it. The thing is, this isn't that bad a movie, just not very original and not even a good rendering of a formula. More derivative than dramatic, more pushy than thrilling, Mirrors is yet another of those horror movies where things leap and make noise off screen for effect.

Birds flap their wings at ear snapping volumes, doors creak and slam louder in this creepy department store than they do anywhere else. Then there is the score which builds to obvious and unoriginal orchestral spikes meant to quicken the pulse. They do, but the payoffs are more often cheap and irritating than edge of your seat exciting.

The main reason I didn't enjoy Mirrors has much to do with the skill-less direction of Alexandre Aja. This horror movie hack with a real taste for the ugly sides of humanity, directs Mirrors with little care for developing the plot beyond mirrors being bad and Kiefer Sutherland fights them. The director of The Hills Have Eyes remake and the trashy High Tension, directs Mirrors minus any plausible explanations, rules or guidelines for his killer of title.

Why do the Mirrors kill? Why do they kill who they kill? A movie doesn't need to explain everything, but Aja is so deliberately vague that it becomes obvious even the director has no idea what drives the evil of the plot. Instead, Aja sits back and waits for the plot to reveal itself. It never does. Mirrors, like The Grudge, The Ring, The Eye and Shutter before it; is just another lame teenagers in danger movie ripped from a likely superior Korean version. Even if you love Sutherland as badass Jack Bauer, you aren't likely to be moved by his listless head strong imitation Jack Bauer in Mirrors.

Movie Review Phone Booth

Phone Booth (2003) 

Directed by Joel Schumacher 

Written by Larry Cohen 

Starring Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Katie Holmes, Forrest Whitaker, Radha Mitchell 

Release Date April 4th, 2003 

Published April 3rd, 2003 

Like many fans of the D.C Comics Superhero Batman I have harbored a good deal of resentment toward Director Joel Schumacher for screwing up the Batman movies. However, whether I've become more mature or Schumacher's films have gotten better, that resentment has lessened. As Bat nipples and bat credit cards recede into the past, I find myself not liking Schumacher's take on the blockbuster franchise, but also not caring nearly as much as I once did about Schumacher having made a bad Batman movie. 

Since his Batman debacle Schumacher has done good work. Schumacher's work on Tigerland, for instance, was astonishingly low-tech yet very artful as the director coaxed a star turn out of then unknown actor Colin Farrell. Now with Schumacher's return to the big budget Hollywood machine, he brings Farrell with him in the minimalist action pic Phone Booth. I find myself once again appreciating the artistry of the man who killed Batman.

In Phone Booth, Colin Farrell is shady public relations guy Stu Shepard. Though Stu is married to Kelly, played by Radha Mitchell, he is also romancing a young starlet named Pam, played by Katie Holmes. When Stu decides to use a payphone booth to call Pam rather than one of his three cell phones, he finds himself the target of a crazed assassin (Kiefer Sutherland's voice). If Stu leaves the booth, he will be shot.

Stu's situation is complicated by a group of prostitutes who want the phone booth and are becoming increasingly more agitated. When the prostitutes get a male friend to try and remove Stu from the booth the assassin shoots the guy and Stu is blamed. As cops arrive, led by Forest Whitaker as the police negotiator, so do the media as well as Stu's wife and girlfriend.

This is quite a daring setup and the execution is flawless. When writer Larry Cohen pitched this story he had to have been met with a number of blank stares. So it comes as no surprise that he's been pitching the story for nearly 20 years. It wasn't until Joel Schumacher signed on that studios began to get interested in this challenging premise. Schumacher's involvement brought some interest from big name stars such as Jim Carrey and Will Smith but it's Farrell (admittedly the cheaper alternative to Carrey and Smith's $20 Million dollar price tags), who took the role and proved to be the perfect choice.

Farrell brings just the right combination of smarm and charm to the role of Stu. Farrel recalls a young Al Pacino, with his sweaty, passionate and energetic performance. Farrell melts down like a pro. As Stu slowly melts from cocky confident defiance to contrite good guy, Farrell never panders to the audience, never begs to be liked. Farrell remains true to the character’s nature, attempting to lie and negotiate his way out all the way to the end, always looking for an angle. 

The real star of Phone Booth however is Joel Schumacher, who's sweeping camera ratchets up the tension from beginning to end. Schumacher does a first rate Hitchcock impression taking this difficult premise and wringing every last bit of tension from it. Using the same real time approach that Hitchcock employed in Rope, Schumacher uses dialogue and stellar camerawork to keep the audience constantly off balance and on the edge of their seat.

Recently Joel Schumacher admitted that he screwed up Batman. That admission and a few more excellent films like Tigerland and Phone Booth and maybe I can forgive him. Of course, there is still 8MM to apologize for but let's leave that for another day. -

Movie Review Taking Lives

Taking Lives (2004) 

Directed by D.J Caruso 

Written by Jon Bokencamp 

Starring Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland, Olivier Martinez, Tcheky Karyo'

Release Date March 19th, 2004

Published March 18th, 2004 

Director D.J Caruso is one of the most promising young directors in all of Hollywood. The Salton Sea with Val Kilmer is one of the most underrated films in years. Combining modern day Tarentino rhythms with classic Hollywood noir, Salton Sea was a rarity that combined smart writing, direction and acting. That success makes Caruso's new film, Taking Lives such a massive disappointment. Whereas Salton Sea was inventive, unique and intelligent, Taking Lives is mundane, predictable and clichéd.

Angelina Jolie stars a FBI agent Illeana Scott, an unusual criminal profiler who has no qualms about crawling in and lying down in an open grave or spending all of her free time staring at pictures of dead bodies. Illeana has traveled to Montreal at the request of a cop friend (Tcheky Karyo) to investigate a serial murderer. The killer’s M.O is to choke his victim, cut off the hands and smash the skull.

It's up to Illeana to draw up a profile of the psycho to help the Montreal cops, who include Paquette (Olivier Martinez) and Duval (Jean-Hughes Anglade), find some sort of rationale for finding the killer. They get a big break when the killer is interrupted during a murder by a guy walking home. The witness is James Costa (Ethan Hawke), a skittish young artist who claims to have never seen a dead body before. 

With Costa's help the cops draw up a sketch of the killer that they hope will lead to his capture. Another break comes when the mother of the alleged killer claims to have seen her son who she had thought was dead, an early victim of the killer. If it all sounds familiar, it is. There is nothing in Taking Lives that is the least bit original. It plays like an homage to Fincher's Seven (the credit sequence is an almost direct lift) but without Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker's ingenious pacing, mystery and artful grunge.

Caruso seems to think that if you show really graphic shots of dead bodies that people will think of Seven and give his film a pass. This is not Seven, this is formula Hollywood with typical thriller twists and turns. Typical character mistakes and an ending so boneheaded that it would be laughable if the actors involved weren't such professionals. David Fincher this is not. 

It's hard to believe that it has been over four years since Angelina Jolie has made a good film. That was her Oscar winning turn in Girl Interrupted. Since that career highpoint, Jolie has fashioned an underwhelming career in big budget action movies, low wattage romances and a whole lot of unnecessary (though not unwelcome) nakedness. Her future still looks bright with Sky Captain and Alexander, but Taking Lives is yet another misstep in a career full of them.

Why an actor with such good radar as Ethan Hawke would choose to make this movie may be the biggest surprise of all. It's not that Ethan hasn't made a bad movie before but, generally speaking, he has a good eye for scripts and avoids formula Hollywood trash. Rounding out the cast of Taking Lives is Kiefer Sutherland in the Kiefer Sutherland role. Honestly Kiefer, fire your agent if he ever sends you a script like this again. How many times can Sutherland play oily creeps?

The film’s biggest disappointment is Caruso who wastes the talent. In transitioning from low budget to big budget, Caruso forgot the things that got him where he is. This film has none of the flare, inventiveness, or smarts of his first film. It's sad to watch Caruso simply translate a script to the screen with little to no style or substance. Taking Lives is one large step back for a director on the way up.

Movie Review Melancholia

Melancholia (2011)

Directed by Lars Von Trier 

Written by Lars Von Trier 

Starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgard, Kiefer Sutherland 

Release Date May 18th, 2011 

Published October 22nd, 2011 

"Melancholia" is a typically divisive film from director Lars Von Trier that will bore and aggravate as many people as it moves and fascinates. You'll find me in the latter category. This moody meditation on life and death, meaning and the lack of meaning, is enthralling in its beauty and heartrending in its sadness.

"Melancholia" is a two part story following the lives of sisters, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). We begin with Justine's story. It is Justine's wedding day and she and her new husband, Michael (Alexander Skarsgard, "True Blood") are late to their reception. Justine's sister Claire and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) have gone out of their way for this wedding in hope that it will free Justine from a lingering depression. Justine and Claire's parents are certainly no help.

Their father (John Hurt) is a drunkard carrying on with a pair of women half his age. Their mother (Charlotte Rampling) is bitter and not making any attempt to hide her loathing of the institution of marriage.

Lingering over Justine's new marriage is her husband's father, Jack (Stellen Skarsgard), who is also Justine's boss. He wants an ad tagline from her so badly that even on her wedding day he persists with work going as far as hiring a man to follow Justine in hopes she will be inspired. By our account Claire is unusual but she's making an effort. Nevertheless, both Claire and John can sense her beginning to slip back toward despair.

Claire's story picks up sometime after the wedding. A planet called Melancholia is approaching earth and while John predicts it will pass while creating a spectacular show in the sky, Claire is uncertain. Claire is terrified that Melancholia is going to collide and destroy the earth. If you haven't guessed that Melancholia is a metaphor for impending death then you aren't really trying. That's the simple metaphor anyway. I suspect something deeper if I were to probe it further but my mind lingers on death and how it haunts everyday life.

Depressing? Maybe, but I actually find comfort here. I think that I find comfort in the same way Von Trier does, with art. Death has a way of focusing the mind and when focused my mind turns to beauty and art. There is great beauty in "Melancholia." Von Trier along with cinematographer Manuel Albero Claro and art director Simone Grau collaborate to create images of ruin and sadness that are achingly beautiful and likely to win "Melancholia" awards for their stunning beauty.

"Melancholia" won't work for most audiences. The film is meandering and humorless and does not move to the beat of the average mainstream American movie. If you are someone who enjoyed Von Trier's previous work or contains the patience and observation needed for this experience, you will be rewarded. "Melancholia" is a work of art.

For the record; I am aware of what Lars Von Trier said about Adolph Hitler. My review of his film in no way demonstrates that I agree with or even understand what Mr. Von Trier was attempting to say about Hitler.

Movie Review: The Sentinel

The Sentinel (2006) 

Directed by Clark Johnson 

Written by George Nolfi 

Starring Michael Douglas, Eva Longoria, Kiefer Sutherland, Kim Basinger 

Release Date April 21st, 2006 

Published April 20th, 2006

Michael Douglas projects an image of class. At sixty his stately handsomeness has an air of wisdom and strength. And yet, in his films Douglas rarely plays any character of true wisdom or class. In fact the word crass is a far better signifier of Douglas's characters than class. Look at his resume. From Fatal Attraction to Wall Street to Basic Instinct to Disclosure to his best film Wonder Boys and now his latest effort the action thriller, The Sentinel, Douglas has a penchant for characters whose penis functions ahead of his brain. It's a pattern that only grows creepier with age. When do Douglas characters start thinking with their heads instead of their pants, the guy is 60 for crying out loud.

In The Sentinel Douglas stars as Secret Service Agent Pete Garrison who once took a bullet for President Reagan. Pete has lived off this fading glory for years although it has done him little good in rising through the ranks of the service where he currently resides on the detail of the First Lady (Kim Basinger). Actually it's not a bad gig for Pete who happens to be boffing the first lady behind the Prez's back. Yeah! In a plot that makes Murder At 1600 look like Shakespeare, Douglas's secret service agent finds his affair with the first lady about to be exposed unless he can track down a terrorist group planning to assassinate the President (David Rasche).

Pete is being framed for the assassination plot by a mastermind so obvious that if you haven't identified him simply from the cast list you are not paying close enough attention. Here's a hint, it's not Kiefer Sutherland. He plays Secret Service Investigator Dave Breckinridge who is assigned to apprehend Pete Garrison after he is implicated in the assassination plot. Pete and Dave have history, Pete may or may not have been sleeping with Dave's wife. Thankfully Breckinridge is the extremely by the book type who does not allow such personal details to cloud his judgement. He also has the help of a new rookie partner, Jill Marin (Eva Longoria), who happens to have trained under Garrison.

Part Murder at 1600, part The Fugitive, and all ugh!!! The Sentinel is a creepy mess of crass commercial filmmaking from a director whose career is marked by some terrific work on the small screen and just awful work on the big screen. Clark Johnson started as an actor on TV's Homicide before moving behind the camera on that show and then on The West Wing, The Shield and Soul Food. His first big screen credit was the TV adaptation SWAT which was, at best, mainstream commercial schlock and at worst yet another dimwitted attempt to create a profitable franchise based on perceived nostalgia .

Johnson's work on The Sentinel is just utter nonsense. Johnson seems completely unaware of just how predictable his mystery is and just plows ahead with one lame action set piece after another on his way to a happy ending. Kiefer Sutherland, in his first major big screen role since he started on TV's best thriller 24, delivers a surprisingly strong performance given the circumstances. It helps that Breckinridge is not far removed from his Jack Bauer. That commanding presence and slight hint of crazy behind the eyes marks both Bauer and Breckinridge and who knows, may just be part of Kiefer the man.

As for Douglas, this aging lothario whose penis constantly leads him into trouble act is getting stale and creepy. How much longer are we to believe that every woman he has sex with is going to get him in serious trouble. He has an Oscar, lead actor in Wall Street, but unlike his father, Kirk Douglas, whose shadow has proven inescapable no matter how much money Michael makes, he's never had a "Lust For Life", a "Spartacus" or a "Bad and The Beautiful". Michael has never made an undeniable screen classic that will be remembered forever.

Would anyone really want to be remembered for Basic Instinct? And even that Oscar for Wall Street was more than a little shaky, it's not the lead performance in that movie and hindsight unkindly reflects how this was as much a win for the performance as for industry people liking Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas has many more films to make and plenty of time to find that timeless classic performance but until he does he is going to be the creepy old guy whose dick does all of his thinking for him. Not a great legacy.