The Sentinel Is A Thoroughly Average Thriller That Somehow Manages To Entertain

The Good: Decent acting, Good pacing
The Bad: Poor Editing/Direction, Thoroughly predictable, Eva Longoria Is A Nonentity
The Basics: While the cast and performances are good in this "protect the president" thriller, The Sentinel‘s direction is clunky and the plot is unsurprising.


Billing in movies often intrigues me. Billing, as you might know, is the order in which cast members are credited in a movie. Top billing is your biggest star, usually, or the one who is bearing the brunt of the acting in a film. There's billing above the title, which is reserved for your biggest stars, there's billing right after the title and there's final billing, which is often reserved for a prestigious actor who wanted to be set aside from the beginning but couldn't crack the first couple of billing spots (Victor Garber, for example, on Alias (reviewed here!) took final billing as opposed to being after Jennifer Garner and Ron Rifkin). From there, billing just goes into credited cast and sometimes that baffles me (how Andy Dick and Brent Spiner do not appear in the credits for Dude, Where's My Car? (reviewed here!) still weirds me out, unless Spiner was too embarrassed to be associated with the project, which I suppose is possible). Anyway, billing in movies almost entirely has to do with things outside the actual film experience, so it's something I don't usually focus on. With The Sentinel, though, billing once again came to my attention. Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland have top billing, before the title. Eva Longoria, who appears to be looking for a vehicle outside Desperate Housewives appears immediately after the title. Kim Basinger, who remains one of Hollywood's most weirdly credited actresses, is given final billing for a role far more substantial and important than Longoria's. Moreover, Basinger as First Lady Sarah Ballentine is more substantial and satisfying to watch (and possessing more airtime) than the role for which she won her Best Actress Oscar in L.A. Confidential (reviewed here!). So, part of what I want to open this review with is the concept that Basinger deserves a lot more credit for her role in The Sentinel and those looking for a real Eva Longoria performance are likely to be seriously disappointed.

The Secret Service of the United States of America, charged with protecting the President of the United States, appears to have a mole in it that is determined to kill the President. Pete Garrison, a veteran of the Service who once took a bullet for Reagan, is the prime suspect when the idea of a plot against the President is raised and he fails a polygraph. His former protege, David Breckinridge, is the lead investigator of the case and he bears a grudge against his former mentor. As David hunts Pete, Pete flees while trying to evade the real assassins and trying to expose the mole within the Secret Service.

The most serious problem with The Sentinel is simply that we've seen it before. This is a fairly unsurprising movie with plot and character resolutions that are oversimplified. This instantly reminds this reviewer of The Game (reviewed here!), another Michael Douglas thriller that failed to thrill because all of the significant twists and turns were entirely foreseeable to anyone familiar with the genre. Similarly, The Sentinel follows so closely in the tradition of movies like North By Northwest (reviewed here!) and The Negotiator as to be fairly predictable. In recent viewing, I think I was more entertained by 16 Blocks.

The thing is, I sat down ready and excited to see The Sentinel. By the end of the opening credits, I was already somewhat disconcerted. The editing is very choppy and not only in the opening sequence. The iconic problematic cut is the transition from the credits to the action of the movie. The camera pans up the White House and the american flag's bottom comes into view and the shot cuts back to a wide shot. It feels more sloppy than stylistic. A decent style could save a movie like this. But the direction from Clark Johnson is more problematic than intriguing.

The characters are generally well-presented. They are interesting and there is a sufficient amount of backstory with Pete and David and Pete and the First Lady to justify the animosities and affections portrayed. Sadly, there is not enough backstory to justify the loyalty Jill shows Pete as opposed to trusting her new boss David. Quirks like that are what keep knocking my impression of the movie down as I write this review.

The movie is well cast, with two exceptions. Eva Longoria adds nothing to the role of Jill. Her character is a nonentity in this movie and Longoria does nothing to break the character out of that mold. Similarly, David Rasche as President Ballentine is terrible casting. There is nothing distinctly or convincingly presidential about Rasche and his performance does nothing to convince the viewer of his status in the world. That's a huge drawback in a movie about protecting the president.

Conversely, Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, and Kim Basinger are all perfectly cast and give wonderful performances. I never would have guessed Basinger could pull off the role of First Lady, but she does it wonderfully. She is compelling, actually, as the distanced First Lady who feels detached from her husband. She makes so much of the movie's movement work.

Sutherland gives a performance that reminds us that he can be rational, something 24 does not give him too often of late (dude, stop torturing people for information! It doesn't work in real life!). Sutherland is cool, reasonable and efficient as David and he rules the scenes he's in without Douglas.

Michael Douglas gives a performance that is not distinctive (it is reminiscent of some of his other roles, like his performance in The Game), but that he does quite well. Douglas is reasonable and his portrayal of an investigator who is methodical and intelligent is entirely plausible. He keeps the movie working, even when the direction is falling down or the plot is foreseeable.

All in all, this movie was engaging enough to keep me awake to watch it. That's why I'm ultimately recommending it. It has just enough to make it worth watching, if not enough to make one want to own it. Just be prepared for it to not surprise you.

For other political thrillers, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Salt
Wall Street
The Informant!

6.5/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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David Lynch's Journey Into Unpleasant Crazy: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

The Good: Well-directed, Interesting vision, Explains some things
The Bad: Adds too many elements that ridiculously complicate the already existing plots, Lack of DVD extras
The Basics: Confused and reworking many elements of Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me presents a number of bad people behaving terribly.


Sometimes, I think that reviewing is an addiction, like alcoholism. Alcoholics, like those with eating disorders, are notorious for playing games. They justify an action here with a maneuver there and they are experts at making deals with themselves ("One more drink, then I'll . . "). I think sometimes when review a whole slew of things, reviewers find themselves making deals with themselves, especially if they go through one artist's entire library. And it does not mean that the deal makes the review any less genuine, but it does mean that there is some factor other than just what is on the material being reviewed coming into play.

I mention this at the beginning of my review of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me because as I considered how I could and would rate this, I found myself making a deal. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is supposedly a prequel to the television series Twin Peaks (reviewed here!) and it does that fairly well (read the full review!). However, in the process, writer/director David Lynch guts much of his own mythology, creates a film that is often disturbing for the sake of being disturbing and utilizes conceits that he uses (better) in other movies of his. In considering all of this, I realized I did not like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me all that much. Some of the problems that others have with it, I do not. But largely, I watched the movie and felt that Lynch did a far better job with Mulholland Drive. Mulholland Drive (reviewed here!) is surreal, somewhat pointless and utterly weird and a film I have avoided reviewing because it is so difficult to describe it or evaluate it. So, as I sat down to write this review, I made myself a deal: I am not recommending Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and I will finally write a review for Mulholland Drive and I WILL recommend that. There is nothing disingenuous in this: ultimately, I would not recommend Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on its own and Mulholland Drive is pretty much a crapshoot anyway.

So, with that up front, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me illustrates events alluded to in the television series Twin Peaks. A year before the murder of Laura Palmer, Teresa Banks is killed, wrapped in plastic and set in a river to drift. When her body is found, the FBI investigates (it's not entirely clear why . . .) with Special Agent Chester Desmond leading the investigation. He is accompanied by FBI forensic coroner Sam Stanley, who performs an autopsy on Teresa's body and finds the requisite clues, like the printed letter inserted under her fingernail. Desmond returns to Teresa's trailer park to look for other clues and disappears entirely.

This, naturally, upsets the Philadelphia FBI office, where Special Agent Dale Cooper has been having dreams and visions. He, Albert, and director Cole are shocked when another lost agent, Jeffries, appears and disappears before them. This seems to have little to do with the life of Laura Palmer, cocaine addict and high school student. She spends her last days doing drugs, having sex with several people, and corrupting her friend Donna. Stalked by an immaterial evil, Laura Palmer is given the opportunity to change her fate, but she rejects it, ultimately leading to her inevitable murder.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is not the violence or how graphic it is, but rather how it makes little sense even to those who paid attention to the television series and pretty painstakingly figured it all out. It makes absolutely no sense to those who come to this as an independent movie. Seriously, if you are not a Twin Peaks fan, the movie is utterly incomprehensible, ruins the surprises of the series (who killed Laura Palmer is downright obvious and explicit in this), and is so troubling that it is not likely to make one want to pick up the television series (which is legitimately great).

Allow me to dispense one criticism many others seem to have with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me: it is graphic. That this movie would be graphic is something of a "well, duh" thing. I loathe drug use and there is a lot of drug use in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me but it makes sense because from the first episode, two things viewers knew about Laura Palmer was that she was a drug dealer and a drug user. So, while we see her do a lot of coke and have a lot of sex, neither of these are a surprise; they are perfectly appropriate for the character she was. We get that.

The problem comes when the graphic qualities seep into other characters who did not have all of Laura's bad habits. For example, Bobby Briggs is a known drug dealer in Twin Peaks. He was also characterized as a varsity athlete and while there are certainly varsity athletes who use coke, he had a father who was troubled by him smoking cigarettes; Bobby suddenly using coke with Laura goes against some of his characterization in a way that simply doesn't work.

Far, far worse is how the character of Donna Hayward fares. Hayward is played by actress Moira Kelly in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, taking over the role from Lara Flynn Boyle. I was only familiar with Kelly from her role in the first season of The West Wing (reviewed here!) but she slides into the role just fine. Without knowing why Boyle did not return for the movie, I am tempted to editorialize and suggest it was because of how her character was gutted. Donna Hayward takes an unfortunate turn toward the dark and rebellious side in the second season of Twin Peaks, ostensibly out of her grief in dealing with Laura Palmer's death. Indeed, in the television series, we see her and Laura dancing together in a remarkably innocent way and that is characterized as how the pair spent their time together. In some ways, Donna was Laura's stabilizing influence. In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Laura is Donna's corrupting influence. This is made graphic by Laura taking Donna to a Canadian strip club where the two begin to prostitute themselves and is justified by Donna being given a date rape drug to forget the entire incident. It's head-shakingly bad.

But as far as the lack of sensibility, nothing compares to the elements that immediately follow Chester Desmond's disappearance. Phillip Jeffries is simply an excuse to put David Bowie into the movie. I like David Bowie, I think he'd be a great fit for Twin Peaks. He's given about a minute of on-screen time and the role is ultimately immaterial. He was never alluded to in Twin Peaks (to my knowledge) and his appearance does nothing, save confuse the issue of what happened to Chester Desmond. Indeed, if anything Jeffries's appearance implies that those who have been trapped in the Red Room can somehow leave it at will as easily as they fall into it.

And there's the real bug up my bottom. I sat through the terrible episodes of the second season of Twin Peaks and I got it. The whole latter portion of that season involves one maniacal genius's attempt to enter the Red Room. There a glyphs, alignment of planets, a specific time and place where the portal into it will be opened. As a result, it is completely clear that it is not an easy place to get into and damn near impossible to escape from.

And yet, in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, director David Lynch makes the strong implication that power lines will get one there and back. Either Lynch just likes keeping his camera dramatically on electric lines, especially during key scenes where characters are appearing or disappearing or this is the statement the film is making. It pretty much guts the series with this added in.

That can pretty much be said of most of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Fans of the series see what had been implied before (and did we truly need to see Jacques Renault sexually mistreat Laura Palmer? Or Laura get abused by Bob?) and it is necessarily graphic and disturbing, but the entire cinematic exercise is unnecessary.

Actress Sheryl Lee does a decent job as Laura Palmer. I ought to say that she does a decent job with the material she was given; Laura Palmer becomes aware of Bob's identity ridiculously early in the movie, which seems odd. Lee does well at playing the bad girl and making all of the surreal elements work.

On a similar front, actor Ray Wise gives it his all as Leland Palmer, but his part has been radically altered for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Leland was presented in only one or two scenes in the pilot episode before his daughter's body is found. He is an energetic lawyer who is seen smiling, bounding around and is a generally amiable and decent guy. In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, he is a neglectful husband, an abusive husband and he is characterized by the violent mood swings that defined his character as a result of Laura's death.

It's sad when those who create a series do not seem to remember how they put it all together and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me "reads" like it was assembled by David Lynch and Robert Engels without any respect to what Lynch had previously created.

On DVD, the film looks good, but is remarkably stark in terms of bonus features. There is a terrible documentary (possibly cut together by monkeys or some kindergarten film school class somewhere) which has some of the stars of Twin Peaks talking about . . . all sorts of random things, sometimes not even tangentially related to Twin Peaks. The thing is, interviews are sliced together such that people are cut off mid-sentence, two people's interviews are intercut together and the whole thing is sloppy and pointless. There is a theatrical trailer for the movie, which is nice, but no deleted scenes. There is also no commentary track and the lack of either of these things is a real waste for such a dense, confused film.

One suspects that David Lynch, who seems to enjoy weird for the sake of weird does not feel the need to have to explain or justify anything to his loyal fans, but in not presenting his thoughts or the goodies that ended up on the cutting room floor (or a full Director's Vision of the film with the movie he wrote and WANTED to make) he abrogates his responsibilities as the creator of a cult classic. It's one thing to not be used to success and be overwhelmed by having legions of fans who look to your work for meaning and entertainment, it is another thing to spit in their faces when they do. Withholding the pieces he has that could make Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me a more complete vision of Twin Peaks is doing just that.

And moviegoers deserve better than that. Fortunately, we have Mulholland Drive . . .

For other heavily surreal films, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
Henry And June
The City Of Lost Children

4/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page on the subject!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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A Predictable And Droll Family Comedy, Marmaduke Underwhelms.

The Good: Not many: one or two jokes.
The Bad: Predictable plot, Awkward CG effects, Uninspired acting, Obvious character directions.
The Basics: Despite one or two laughs, Marmaduke is a big-screen flop which is a waste of time for anyone truly looking to be entertained.


There comes a moment in the horror-comedy Zombieland (click here for my review!) where Bill Murray admits that if there were anything he could take back in life it would be doing the Garfield movies. Even though it was an obvious joke in the film, it ought to have given pause to makers of other films involving animals. Unfortunately for Marmaduke, the next in line of comic strips turned films, the movie suffers for many of the same reasons as the Garfield movies and because it comes so closely on the heels of the recent animal movie flop Furry Vengeance.

Marmaduke, truth be told, is a movie I had little interest in seeing after my partner and I saw the previews. However, my wife is a big fan of animals and she loves Great Danes, which the title character is, so when we went to the movies last weekend, that is what I ended up watching with her. I want my money back. And, in perhaps the biggest, best critique against the film, so does my wife. My wife has a love of comedies and of animals and this movie was so bad that even she was disappointed.

Phil and Debbie Winslow live in Kansas with their Great Dane Marmaduke and cat Carlos when Phil is offered a promotion at Bark Organic Pet Food that comes with moving to California. In Orange County, Phil meets with his boss at the dog park and Marmaduke meets the other dogs. Marmaduke quickly develops a crush on Jezebel and befriends Mazie, Guiseppe, and Raison. However, Marmaduke's attraction for Jezebel quickly earns him the ire of the bully dogs, Bosco, Lightning and Thunder and when Marmaduke gets into conflicts with them, Phil's job is threatened.

Through a series of inane plot developments - including a canine surfing contest and Marmaduke and Phil becoming separated - Marmaduke wins the more considerate girl, comes through for Phil and creates a movie that is so terrible I am stretching to find things to write about it.

The plot is utterly predictable and is far more fractured than flowing. As one might expect from a movie based upon a comic strip, the film is almost entirely devoid of character development. Indeed, writers Vince Di Meglio and Tim Rasmussen take a character that is essentially a one-panel joke machine and make him into the moving incarnation of the same with no real growth or development. In other words, the viewer does not so much care about Marmaduke as they suffer through watching him make jokes like widening his eyes at cute girls (in this case female dogs) and poop references without actually building a likable character. Instead, the movie is slapstick and schtick and the most insulting aspect is that it is nothing viewers have not seen before in far too many other, vastly better, family films.

The film seems more like a desperate attempt to make a film than actually having a good story to tell. Phil is likable only in a bland, "hey this is a good guy we're watching" way. William H. Macy's talents are utterly wasted as Mr. Twombly, though it is nice to see Macy in a comedy again. Macy has great range, but in Marmaduke, he is used as a slapstick prop and it is unfortunate to watch. Phil's character seems mostly based upon the casting for him as Phil is played by Lee Pace, who is a good actor in many things, but seems to fit the cartoonish smooth-faced, bug-eyed delivery that the casting department for this film was looking for.

This brings us to Own Wilson Wilson provides the voice of Marmaduke as part of a cast of actors - George Lopez, Fergie, Emma Stone, Kiefer Sutherland, Sam Elliot - who are distinguished and whom director Tom Dey must have especially explicit pictures of the worst kind of. Seriously, that is the only reason I can believe as to how so many quality actors were bamboozled into participating in this lame-joke festival. The voice actors do fine with their deliveries, but the jokes are essentially one-liners and a collection of one-liners hardly makes a film.

Moreover, the voice acting is supposed to be trumped by the computer effects work which animate the lips of the characters and put the animals in situations animals clearly are not. Those CG-effects are tiresome and they fail to sell the unreality of some of the fights, contests and (sigh) dance numbers. The lip synchs do not always match and ultimately, the film is over long before it reaches its end because the viewer does not care about it.

Easily going to be one of the worst films of the year, Marmaduke has only one true redeeming feature I can think of: at least it beat the Cats And Dogs sequel to market.

For other comedies, please check out my reviews of:
Year One
Valentine’s Day
The Incredibles

1/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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Dark City Alex Proyas' Existential Nightmare And Perfect Film!

The Good: Characters, acting, special effects
The Bad: Fails to satisfactorily answer the question "What's the point?"
The Basics: A must see! The bigger the screen the better! Only to be viewed in absolute darkness!

I used to think it was rare when Roger Ebert and I agree on a film (though that's changed quite a bit since I first wrote this review). I've never met the man, but reading his opinions or seeing his show, I've seldom found myself agreeing with his views on films. Dark City is an exception and I urge anyone considering seeing this film to read his review of Dark City.

Dark City is an existentialist's nightmare. It's a cinematographic masterpiece that does not rest simply on the strength of an amazing "look;" it is populated with numerous facets that defy film - especially genre - boundaries and limitations. While not strictly a special effects movie, this film uses pretty incredible special effects that still look great today to vividly create a distinct and nightmarish world. Dark City is the thinking person's The Matrix and it is ironic that so many people found Dark City AFTER The Matrix when Dark City was released the year before.

Dark City is the search for what makes a person human. Indeed, the experiment being conducted in Dark City is: if an individual is given memories of behaving a certain way, will they continue in that vein? The film explores what happens when John Murdock, suffering from amnesia, pieces together that he is a murderer through loads of circumstantial evidence. Not even possessing the memories of killing, he becomes frightened that he may not even know himself. In the process, he attempts to enlist the aid of his wife - whom he is unaware that he is estranged from - and a mad scientist caricature named Dr. Schreber. As he searches for his identity, Murdock is hunted by an empathetic and open-minded police detective and The Strangers.

The Strangers are essentially the scientists conducting the experiment and they are fascinating villains made more menacing by the fact that at least one of them is a child in form. Using the bodies of men who have died, the Strangers rule the city and warp reality around their own concepts of what makes humans tick in a quest to understand how memory and action interrelate. The veil for the quest to understand the human soul is brilliantly executed as writer-director Alex Proyas (who co-wrote this with Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer) creates an association between memory and action.

John Murdock is an empathetic character. Lacking any real memories, he finds himself traumatized to learn that he might be a killer. Murdock's chase is wonderfully paralleled by the unraveling of a case for Inspector Frank Bumstead. Bumstead intellectually unfolds the details that Murdock instinctively unravels and the parallel stories work brilliantly together to create a vivid and memorable exploration of the human condition.

Part of what makes the characters so genius is the acting behind them. Richard O'Brien and Ian Richardson are menacing as the villainous Strangers Mr. Hand and Mr. Book. Both lend a creepy stiff posture to the enemy that makes us believe in their power without questioning. Similarly, Jennifer Connelly's very human and feminine performance serves as a perfect foil to the frantic performance given by the lead, Rufus Sewell. Connelly's Emma is quiet and trusting and expresses love so perfectly with her eyes and body language. Connelly has the incredible ability to emote and she uses it perfectly in this film.

William Hurt does an excellent job as the fastidious and efficient, though emotionally reserved Inspector Bumstead. Hurt's poker face is on the entire movie and he creates a memorable gumshoe that we wish we could see more of. Similarly, Kiefer Sutherland gives one of the best performances of his career. Wounded by The Strangers, Dr. Schreber walks with a severe limp and Sutherland sells us on his damage. Sutherland creates a series of defects, including a speech impediment that makes Dr. Schreber more ambiguous than villainous. His range is definitely pushed with this performance.

But much of the movie rests on the performance of Rufus Sewell. Sewell is brilliant as John Murdock and from the moment he awakens naked in the bathtub, we are hooked on his performance. His eyes connote a power and director Alex Proyas uses that intensity to sell the audience on the abilities Murdock develops. All in all this is the performance that should have made Sewell huge, he is that impressive in the role.

The weakness of Dark City is in its definition. In the opening scene we are informed that The Strangers and their ability to Tune has brought them to a point where they are seeking survival for their collective memories. When, in the film, they seem to discover that it is unclear what they have learned that they didn't know before. In fact, more than unlocking the key to what it is to be human (which begs the unanswered question "What about being human, being individual, makes them think that humanity is the key to saving their race?"), it seems they succeed in making a human more like them.

On DVD, there are two commentary tracks, as well as featurettes on the making of the film. There is also a “Director’s Cut” (review forthcoming) which was not nearly as good. The Blu-Ray disc has BOTH versions of the film and represents the greatest value for viewers.

This is a fantastic drama and a perfect film that overcomes its lingering questions through the strength of acting, character, special effects and available plot. That is to say, other than the way the film is set up, everything that we see that happens makes sense!

For a similar mind-blowing film, please check out my review of Inception!

10/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010, 2007, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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