Overall Rating
  Awesome: 22.37%
Worth A Look: 52.63%
Average: 6.58%
Pretty Bad: 14.47%
Total Crap: 3.95%
4 reviews, 52 user ratings
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| Spy Game |
by Preston Jones
"New hunk meets old hunk...with Bruckheimer flavored results."
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In these kid-driven days of Harry Potter and Monsters, Inc. at the multiplexes, it is a great relief to finally have a substantial, thought-provoking film for adults.Although Spy Game is somewhat of an anomaly for director Tony Scott (True Romance, Crimson Tide) in that the film actually has some weight beyond its flashy visuals and staccato editing, Scott acquits himself well as a director with a flair for the dramatic.
Hollywood has indeed restrained itself in these days following the events of Sept. 11; a film like Spy Game would undoubtedly have been much more graphic prior to the attacks than it is now. Indeed, as I watched the film, I got the feeling that certain scenes had been tempered to reduce the levels of violence and bloodshed.
Hopefully, Hollywood will realize that filmmaking is not always enhanced with gore and viscera — as with this film, all you really need is a good story.
The movie feels a lot (at times) like an episode of CBS’ The Agency, so it should come as no surprise to learn it was written by Michael Frost Beckner, who happens to be that series’ principal scribe.
While audiences are most likely flocking to see the film just because of Brad Pitt and Robert Redford, most won’t have a clue that they’ll be sinking their teeth into something as surprisingly substantial as Beckner’s story.
Spy Game is set primarily one day in 1991, which is supposed to be CIA operative Nathan Muir’s (Redford, late of The Last Castle) last day on the job. As his resourceful secretary Gladys (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) packs his belongings, Muir longingly gazes at a brochure for beachfront property in the Bahamas at which, presumably, he will spend his retirement days. Muir’s daydreaming is interrupted when he is called into a task force meeting whose focus is one of his ex-protégés.
The protégé in question is Tom Bishop (Pitt), a mole hired and trained by Muir after the two met in the closing stages of Vietnam. He is caught, tortured and will be executed in 24 hours, according to the CIA task force. Because the outcome of an upcoming trade negotiation with China hangs in the balance, the agency decides the best course of action would be inaction.
This does not sit well with Muir, who feels as though the agency is betraying Bishop. But how can a guy with nine toes out the door do anything about it, especially when he’s spending the bulk of his day answering the task force’s questions about Bishop’s background?
While the setup sounds mundane, the staging is anything but; it is what makes Spy Game ultimately so entertaining. The big set pieces come in flashbacks, as Muir describes how he met and trained Bishop.
Director Scott uses different color hues for each of Spy Game’s many locations (it was filmed in a staggering five countries on three continents), much like last year’s Traffic. However, his overuse of spastic editing and sweeping zooms makes Spy Game resemble something more akin to Armageddon (or any other Michael Bay film, for that matter).
Beckner’s literate, witty script punctuates the action every so often with a superimposed clock, a la the Fox TV series 24, which in the case of Spy Game becomes overly distracting as the action builds early on.
The cast is excellent, with Pitt and Redford both injecting life into and avoiding clichés with their characters.While audiences may feel compelled to avoid Spy Game in part due to some war-like images of battle in far away foreign countries, don’t let the subject matter deter you from this good film.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=5637&reviewer=304
originally posted: 02/19/02 14:53:23
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USA
21-Nov-2001 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
24-Jan-2002
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