Film: The Sentinel and 24

Twentieth Century Fox has recently released its much-hyped political thriller, The Sentinel, starring Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland. A crucial element of the film’s pre-release promotion was several extended previews aired during the Fox television show 24, also starring Sutherland. Unfortunately, The Sentinel is not as good as a single episode of the ground-breaking televi­sion series.

The Sentinel focuses on the diffi­culties of Pete Garrison (Douglas), a Secret Service agent who took a bul­let for President Reagan during the 1981 assassination attempt. Now, 25 years later, Garrison learns from an informant that terrorists are planning an assassination of the current presi­dent, and Garrison soon realizes that he’s being framed as the mole in the Secret Service who’s assisting the ter­rorists. Unwilling to submit to an in­vestigation, Garrison escapes after his arrest, hoping to prove his innocence and thwart the coming assassination attempt. As he does so, he’s pursued by his former protégé, David Breckin­ridge (Sutherland), who’s ex-wife Gar­rison once seduced.

The familiarity of the film’s narra­tive set-up is unrelieved by any inter­esting developments in its resolution. The early revelation that Garrison is having an affair with the first lady (Kim Basinger) is unsurprising, and the eventual unmasking of the real traitor is fully anticipated and unaf­fecting. The direction by Clark John­son (S.WA.T) is similarly routine and uninspired; and the script, adapted by George Nolfi (Ocean’s Twelve) from the novel by Gerald Petievich, is flush with cliched dialogue and shallow characterization. This is especially lamentable in the case of Sutherland, whose well-known talents are com­pletely wasted. Johnson, probably aware of the script’s deficiencies, un­successfully tries to create tension by employing irritating swish pans and inexplicable laid-over graphics. But there’s no way to compensate for the utter lack of suspense in the story line, and the film, although mildly enter­taining, is routine and forgettable.

At one point after Garrison has gone on the lam, Breckinridge warns his pursuing agents that Garrison is extremely dangerous, as he’s highly trained and more experienced than they are. “You’re chasing your worst nightmare,” he tells them, but he should have been issuing a warn­ing to Twentieth Century Fox—and any studio planning to release a politi­cal thriller—that their real “nightmare” is the impeccable television series 24, which has not only set the standard for contemporary thrillers, but which is also available to viewers every Monday night with no admission fee. For more than five decades, Hollywood has set the standard for television to emulate, now, the roles have oddly reversed.

Fox’s 24, which many consider the best series in television history, is in­novative and intelligent—masterfully written, produced, and performed. Each season of 24 covers a day in the life of Jack Bauer, a no-holds-barred government agent who works for the U.S. Counter Terrorist Unit (C.T.U.) in Los Angeles. The series, justly fa­mous for its real-time suspense, stunning plot progressions, and serious character development, was the brain­child of producer/writers Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran. Surnow, who produced La Femme Nikita with Coch­ran and had written for The Equalizer and Miami Vice, called up Cochran and pointed out that a typical television season consists of 22 episodes, suggest­ing that they concoct a proposal for a 24-episode series that would cover 24 hours in real time. Cochran, a lawyer who began writing in the industry for L.A. Law, felt that it was impossible, but Surnow pressed the idea. At first they considered a romantic comedy re­volving around a wedding, but Coch­ran felt that the format’s natural em­phasis on time pressure was much more appropriate to a thriller, which called to mind other race-against-the­-clock films like Fred Zinnemann’s The Day of the Jackal (1975) and Wolfgang Petersen’s In the Line of Fire (1993).

Surnow and Cochran then brought in Howard Gordon, a prin­cipal writer for The X-Files, and wrote the first season of 24 about Jack Bauer’s attempts to prevent the assassina­tion of Senator David Palmer—who is expected to become the first black president—on the day of the Califor­nia primary. The pilot, which aired in the fall of 2001, was audacious and breathtaking, and the show immedi­ately developed both a cult following and industry respect. The series, now in its fifth season, is still as fresh and effective as ever, and it’s spawned ev­erything from video games to books to action figures. The show’s unrelent­ing patriotism in the face of interna­tional terrorists has had a wide appeal across the political spectrum, winning Golden Globes and Emmys from the Hollywood establishment, yet also re­maining a favorite of Rush Limbaugh and being cited in a recent column by Pat Buchanan.

The innovative use of real time in 24, along with its ever-ticking digi­tal clock, its ingenious use of split screens, its remarkable plot twists and unexpected deaths, and its carefully crafted development of the characters’ personal lives, has made it addictive television. Now that the earlier sea­sons are available on DVD, it’s not un­common for newcomers to watch the entire 24 hours (actually, each episode is 44 minutes, given the commercials) over a weekend—or even in a single sleepless day.

Certainly, 24 is a unique case, but the fact remains that contemporary television is often better than the fea­ture films produced by Hollywood. Network TV, spurred by the com­petition of cable television over the past few decades, has been forced to elevate its product and take more creative chances. At the same time, many of the best writers in Hollywood (like Walon Green, J. J. Abrams, and Chris Carter) decided that the security and creative openness of network televi­sion was a more stable and innovative career than working in the cutthroat, one-picture-at-a-time environment of Hollywood feature films. In the fea­ture business, where the director is king, the writer takes a back seat, often being overwritten without con­sultation, and is typically not present during shooting. But in the world of television, the writers are also the producers and the primary creators, while the directors are essentially hired hands who do as they’re told. Similarly, as many of the best writ­ers started migrating to television, so did many talented Hollywood actors like Sutherland, Vincent D’Onofrio, Anthony LaPaglia, Patricia Arquette, Lance Henriksen, William Petersen, and Gary Sinise. The resulting com­bination of good writers and capable performers has created a new vibrancy in American television.

It’s true, of course, that much con­temporary television, like feature films, is full of political correctness (The West Wing is often referred to as The “Left” Wing), immorality, violence (24 be­gins each episode with an appropriate warning), and adolescent sexual refer­ences. Nevertheless, these problems are less flagrant than in movies, as the networks are compelled to attract a broader audience. It’s also true that no recent television show, not even The X-Files, has been as consistent as 24; even so, clever writing pops up regularly in episodes of House, Medium, and even the popular Lost. Yes, the crotchety Dr. House is often crude and unethi­cal, and both Medium and Lost are often silly, but the best of these shows is far more entertaining than 90 percent of the typical Hollywood fare.

Contemporary television, as in the early days of the medium, is flush with creativity, talented writers, seri­ous performers, and a fundamental belief in the power of the story. The contemporary film industry, on the other hand, is generally moribund, producing very few movies that any­one over the age of 18 would spend his money on. The Sentinel is sadly indicative of this development, and its self-induced comparison with 24 merely underscores the trend.

Author

  • William Baer

    William Baer is a graduate of U.S.C. Cinema where he received the Jack Nicholson Screening Award and taught in the Filmic Writing department. He currently teaches English and Film at the University of Evansville, Indiana and is a frequent contributor to Creative Screenwriting.

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