The mysterious infiltrating-mole plot has been done before, as well as the Secret Service movie, but The Sentinel has one thing that those other movies don't: the world's most dangerous extramarital affair.
Career Secret Service agent Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas), who once took a bullet to save Reagan, actually has the stones to sleep with the first lady. And who can blame him, when she's as poised, elegant and gorgeous as Kim Basinger?
Through a paranoid street informer, Pete learns about a plot to assassinate the president. But the mole uses Pete's secret to frame him and make him look like the prime suspect. To make matters worse, Pete's old pal Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland), currently the chief investigator on the case, hates him.
Based on a novel by former Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, The Sentinel is the kind of movie that William Friedkin would have made in braver times. He would have concentrated on the sequence in which Pete evades his colleagues using inside knowledge plus his superior experience against them. Friedkin understood how small details and process could drive a plot.
But Sentinel director Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T.) merely turns in a serviceable thriller. While he manages a reasonable amount of slick entertainment, he can't figure out how to disguise or deal with the mole character. It's too easy to solve the mystery early on, and once it's officially revealed in the final 20 minutes, the film begins coasting.
Likewise, Johnson avoids politics, giving us a totally average, inert president (David Rasche) who neither seems too smart nor too dumb. Protesters show up in one scene, but their picket signs are obscured, and they're treated as a standard annoyance. It's moderate policy as modern filmmaking.
However, Johnson winds up his film with a stunning moment: Our two lovers part, separated by an incredibly complicated web of security and spin, and it's almost as devastating as real politics.