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For an action film there certainly was very little action in Spy Game starring Robert Redford (The Last Castle). Redford was the about to retire CIA agent Nathan Muir tying up lose ends on his last day with the agency. Okay there were a couple of explosions, not very big ones mind you. A few shots fired and a fake electrocution pretty much summed up the “action” and the remainder of the film is filled with talk, back flashes and strategy. I guess you can say Redford is rounding out his career with two chess like films demonstrating he is a hell of a chess player (no board or pieces required). Also staring in the Tony Scott (Enemy of the State) directed film is Brad Pitt (The Mexican and The Fight Club). Pitt is the Redfordesque protégé Tom Bishop AKA Boy Scout. Spy Game had a promising beginning but quickly went into all talk and little action. I was not bored, more like disappointed. I was expecting action sequences and got meetings and debriefings. The cinematography was grainy and dark. I guess Daniel Mindel wanted us to not notice that Redford and Pitt did not age in the 16-year time span that Spy Game covered. The dimness also emphasized the destruction and despair of the locations. All in all a decent story, just uneventful. The movie begins with Pitt dressed in medical attire entering a Chinese prison to administer cholera inoculations. He sneaks a pill, gels his hands and commences to electrocute himself. His cohorts inject him with something and the prison doctor declares him dead. In the 10 minutes it takes to reinstate the prison electricity, he comes to, finds the prisoner he was looking for, gets back to the room and then gets loaded into the ambulance with the person he came for. Only he made a mistake, gets caught at the gate and is arrested as a spy. Enter Redford. He is woken up by Pitt’s current boss and told to get to the office now if he wants to read the communiqué before someone else is on it. Turns out Pitt was working on his own and the CIA is going to wash their hands of him and let him be executed in 24 hours. The reasoning behind this move is to avoid upsetting the President’s impending trip to China to enact a trade agreement. Redford worms his way into the action by destroying the personnel files of Pitt and telling his superiors all that information is in his head. He then reconstructs the moment they met in 1975 in Vietnam up until their last encounter in Beirut. Redford develops Pitt’s character through his own eyes. The Boy Scout from Hemet, California that he manipulates, grooms and transforms into a well trained CIA operative just like himself. Spy Game is a decent enough story but I believe Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata could have beefed it up a little more with stronger action scenes and less story telling. Redford’s performance was stellar since he didn’t try to be a romantic lead in any way and Pitt was convincing in his role. Also appearing in this movie was Catherine McCormack (The Tailor of Panama) as Elizabeth Hadley, Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Gladys Jennip, Redford’s ultra efficient secretary and Stephen Dillane. There was absolutely no booty shots, a gratuitous chest scene or even some buff arm flexing. This was strictly a strategic game and only brain flexing was involved. I will tip you off, Redford is good at game playing, well at least in his movies. The audience applauded the end of the film but I was not that impressed. I gave Spy Game a seven on the About-Movies.com scale. Goodbye
Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:49:08 AM Click Here to get back into frames.
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