The Sentinel is one of those well-oiled-machine movies from Hollywood that's slick in an inoffensive way, efficient in a give-the-viewers-what-they-want way. It has no personality per se, but that's what a picture like this is all about - a kind of gets-the-job-done professionalism we're seeing less and less these days, and which is harder to bring off than you might think.

The Sentinel Credit: 20th Century Fox

Someone's trying to assassinate the president of the United States (David Rasche, with that handsomely responsible news anchor look). The word is the "someone" may be a White House insider, so the head of the Secret Service (Martin Donovan) orders all his agents to take a lie detector test.

That means everyone, from veteran Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas), who decades ago took one (a bullet, that is) for the Gipper, to David Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland), Pete's former protege, to Jill Marin (Eva Longoria), a rookie who's been on the job for about two days.

The plot goes off in a half-dozen different directions, many of them familiar from other thrillers like No Way Out, The Fugitive and In the Line of Fire. One of the more original subplots involves the first lady (lovely Kim Basinger wearing a tight little smile and alternating between Jackie Kennedy shifts and Laura Bush pantsuits), who has her own Secret Service secret.