Sutherland acts like Douglas' heir

Superior performances make up for the lack of surprises in this thriller.
By ROGER MOORE
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL
There's a torch being passed in "The Sentinel." Watch carefully and you'll see the hand-off.
Michael Douglas, a reliable, Oscar-winning leading man, equally at home as hero or villain, up for the occasional comedy -- lights up his scenes with Kiefer Sutherland.
Sutherland, for those missing "24," is the new Michael Douglas -- earnest, tough, vulnerable and very cool. One of the great pleasures of movie-going these past 20 years has been watching Sutherland age and grow into the kind of rough-hewn lead his old man never was.
And when he and Douglas square off in the shouting-at-the-same-time rages in "The Sentinel," it's more than just a Secret Service prot & eacute;g & eacute; challenging his mentor (Douglas), a grizzled vet who "took a bullet for the Old Man" (Ronald Reagan). It's an actor who's paid his dues, relaunched his career on TV, staking a claim for all that Douglas has been on the big screen all these years.
"The Sentinel" is a solid Secret Service procedural built into a tale of an underexplained plot to kill the president, one involving a too-obvious "mole" in the service.
None of the moustache-twirling villainy or pinned-to-your-seat suspense of "In the Line of Fire," Clint Eastwood's superior cat-and-mouse Secret Service thriller of years back. This is solid genre filmmaking that makes up for a lack of surprises with superior performances, excellent depictions of tradecraft (shades of "CSI") and whiplash editing and pacing.
Moving along
Actor-turned-director Clark Johnson ("S.W.A.T.") has figured out that a thriller doesn't have to be that thrilling to work. It does, however, have to move, and "The Sentinel" does.
There's a tip that someone is going to make an attempt on the president (David Rasche). There's a complication involving the first lady, and since she's smartly played by Kim Basinger, you can guess where that leads.
Agent Pete (Douglas) is suspected by Agent Dave (Sutherland). Eva Longoria, hot TV "housewife" du jour, gets in the middle of the tug of war.
Agents at every pay grade are running hither and yon, tracking leads, sniffing for "the mole" and trying to outsmart somebody "who knows what you know, who knows how you think," as Sutherland's Tommy Lee Jones-ish character growls.
Everybody yells "Go, go, GO!" a lot.
And 108 minutes later, you get the resolution you pretty much figure out at the 40-minute mark. But Douglas and Sutherland make it interesting.
Look past the Secret Service sunglasses, the ear-pieces, and the ever-present microphone-up-the-sleeve. You just might see a torch, and a very deft hand-off from a movie star we've embraced for 20-plus years, to his 39-year-old heir apparent.