The Sentinel

Herald rating: * *

This isn't the first time Michael Douglas has darkened the White House door. He had the top job in The American President, the enjoyable 1995 romantic comedy by The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin.

He's returned in this tepid and inept assassination thriller as part of the hired help.

Like Clint Eastwood before him in the superior In The Line Of Fire , the 62 year-old Douglas plays veteran Secret Service agent Mike Garrison.

Despite taking a bullet for Reagan back in 1981, the guy hasn't risen up the ranks of the agency charged with protecting the first family while talking up their sleeves and causing a perpetual strain on the Federal sunglasses budget.

Old Clint sure looked better in those shades. Old Douglas just looks in need of a labrador on a harness.

Actually, the whole film feels a bit on the dim side. It just keeps bumping into things, tripping itself up, shouting a lot and forgetting where it put things.

Visually, it's bit of a cliched mess. Story-wise it's derivative - of Line of Fire, The Fugitive, and every second White House thriller - only with less believability than any past visits to the Oval Office. With David Rasche of Sledge Hammer fame, it comes with surely the least charismatic screen president in some time.

And throughout it labours under some vast gaps in logic as it stitches together a conspiracy plot about a would-be assassin within the Secret Service ranks. This forces Garrison to go it alone when he's framed as the mole.

He's fingered because he's got motive to off the boss. He's having an affair with the First Lady (Basinger, who seems to have found a White House cupboard of Jackie O's old frocks and possibly some of her tranquilisers).

And his manly magnetism is such that he's ruined his friendship with fellow agent David Breckinridge (Sutherland) for supposedly sleeping with the younger man's wife.

Once Garrison is framed, it's Sutherland's agent that has to chase him from Washington to a G8 summit in Toronto, assisted by rookie Jill Marin (Longoria).

Suppose one might consider having the star of 24 chasing a maverick agent about, rather than playing one a "twist". It could also be called miscasting, as is having a petite but heavily armed Desperate Housewife wander through the film with nothing much to say and no apparent purpose.

Other than to prove those black Secret Service suits and kevlar vests do come in a size four.

CAST: Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, Eva Longoria, Kim Basinger
DIRECTOR: Clark Johnson
RATING: M (medium level violence)
RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley