THE SENTINEL

Stick with “24.”

Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG-13 (action violence, mild sex scene). At the Empire, the 84th

Street, the Kips Bay, others.

(two stars)

‘THE Sentinel – is so bland that it wants only to be as good as TV.Not as good as good TV,like “24.” It merely aspires to be the Regis Philbin of D.C.thrillers.It isn ‘t trying to dazzle you with style,complexity or intelligence.

Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas)is an aging Secret Service agent haunted by either his memories of taking a bullet for President Reagan or by his shame for ripping off the Clint Eastwood character in “In the Line of Fire.”

Kiefer Sutherland is a fiercely professional fellow agent who used to be good friends with Pete,until Pete apparently,um, debriefed his wife.Eva Longoria is the rookie hottie who stands next to Sutherland a lot.

She is about as vital to the movie as the guy who tears your ticket on the way to your seat.

We glide around the White House as staffers bustle importantly and bark information.

It ‘s a flipped-over “West Wing,- with the president in the background:”Classic is in the Oval!” “Pontiac and Raven are in the yard and ready to go!” Everyone is always loading weapons and squealing away in armored cars and wearing cool sunglasses and frowning at crowds.It ‘s all quite exciting,especially at the most jargony moments:”Watch your three!- “I do not have a visual!”

Garrison has a problem:He ‘s secretly servicing the first lady (Kim Basinger).When a greasy informant tells him there ‘s a mole in the Secret Service who is plotting to assassinate the president, all agents are hauled in for a polygraph,and Garrison fails it for the wrong reason.

There ‘s only one real question to resolve:Who ‘s the mole?But it ‘s pretty obvious that it ‘s one of two characters.The motive is muddled and there ‘s no reason for the informant to be involved;in the words of Agent Longoria,”On a gut level,it doesn ‘t make sense.”

Garrison is framed in advance by the bad guys plotting to murder the president. That’s dumb for two reasons: His affair with the first lady, which they know about, already makes him a potential suspect, and if he’s in custody when the president is assassinated he can’t be fingered for it. A word of advice, evildoers: Next time, release your phony evidence after you’ve pulled off the crime.

Here’s the top-secret reason Garrison is framed: so we can watch Douglas sneak around tapping people’s phone lines, posing as a Publishers Clearing House dork and getting into those slo-mo glass-shattering shootouts you remember from every ’80s action movie.

The cat-and-cat game of a renegade agent matching wits with other agents doesn’t take us far: Garrison finds what he needs to know on the Internet. He does risk his hide slipping past security to tell the first lady he was set up, but why? He has her cellphone number and often uses it. Technology is frustrating today’s thriller writer by making reality too easy.

As the plot goes, so goes the dialogue. The second half of the movie sounds like it was written by Dolph Lundgren. “Just get me out of here . . . you are chasing your worst nightmare . . . this is out of control . . . don’t move . . . don’t make me do this . . . let’s do this.” And when pointing a pistol at a killer, it’s “Who sent you? Who sent you?” Thanks, got it the first time.

There are exactly two witty lines. When Garrison confesses his love for the first lady, he is told, “Well, that’s practical.” And when agents learn that someone among them is trying to kill the president, one of them calls out, “What’s the procedure for that?”

kyle.smith@nypost.com