Spy Game: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

(Originally published 2002)

Tony Scott's “Spy Game” spans 16 years, from 1975 to 1991, although you’d never know it judging by the faces of its stars, Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, who don’t age a day as the film ricochets among the decades.

In the film, Redford is Nathan Muir, a weathered CIA agent whose retirement from the agency is interrupted when his protégé, Tom Bishop (Pitt), botches a risky attempt to free a political prisoner (Catherine McCormick) from a heavily guarded prison in Hong Kong.

Now facing certain execution in 24 hours (these sorts of movies are always trying to beat the clock), Tom’s only hope is Nathan, who must outmaneuver several high-level CIA operatives determined to sacrifice Bishop so they can protect a pending trade agreement the U.S. is entering into with China.

Instead of focusing solely on this story, which gets off to a rousing start and hints at what might have become of Redford’s character in 1975’s “Three Days of the Condor,” “Spy Game” splits into shards of vignettes.

For the next 90 minutes, it reaches into the past to play a game of global ping pong, bouncing between the United States, Vietnam, East Berlin, West Berlin, China and Beirut in a series of extended flashbacks and flashforwards designed to underscore the importance of Muir’s and Bishop’s relationship.

What’s created is a sort of reverse momentum, and while parts of the movie are lively and a few scenes are chilling, particularly a terrorist bombing that blows apart a Beirut high-rise, too much of the film is bogged down with reams of exposition--most of which keep it from going anywhere.

The film, from a script by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata, is unnecessarily chatty, but unlike David Mamet’s “Heist” or this year’s superior post Cold War thriller “The Tailor of Panama,” the dialogue never pops off the screen to become an enjoyment in and of itself. Both “Heist” and “Panama” were dark, ironic satires, but “Spy Games” takes itself so seriously, any looseness it could have had is hidden within the deep recesses of Redford’s craggy face.

The workmanlike script goes through the motions of the complex plot, offering a rousing scene here and there, but it ultimately makes it too easy for the ever-cool Muir to outsmart his colleagues, a well-dressed band of morons who have no place making decisions about the state of the United States.

Grade: C