Spy Game film review

certificate_15

SPY GAME

When Brad Pitt appeared in Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It, there was a distinctive sense that the aging Hollywood legend was handing over his mantle as the leading blonde guy in town. Nine years later the two are reunited, their status now on a very different footing, but their roles in Spy Game still reflecting a teacher/pupil relationship as they play two CIA agents at opposite ends of their careers in the slick but disjointed thriller.

Directed by Tony Scott, whose reputation for glossy action has been established through films such as Top Gun and Enemy Of The State, Spy Game centres on the covert world of the CIA in the turbulent post Gulf war months of 1991. But for all its frenetic pace and polished pyrotechnics as its story navigates its way through some of the world's most politically volatile locations, Spy Game still manages at times to feel laboured and directionless. Its best moments are when Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) teaches his protégé Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) the tricks of the spying trade.

Redford is perfect for the role of the weathered and wise Muir, who punctuates his guarded speech with pearls such as, "If I'm walking into a shit storm, I want to know which way the wind's blowing." It's as Muir is clearing out his desk on his last day as a CIA agent, perusing brochures for his retirement in the Bahamas, that he discovers Bishop has been captured by the Chinese who plan to execute him within 24 hours. When he realises his bosses consider Bishop's death politically expedient and have no intention of arranging his release, Muir defies them and takes it upon himself to organise the rescue of his one-time partner.

Where the film falters is in its cursory treatment of this storyline in favour of establishing Muir and Bishop's history together. Beginning with their first meeting in Vietnam in 1975, it then switches to operations in Berlin and Beirut, the latter providing the venue for the film's obligatory romantic interlude involving Bishop and a beautiful aid worker, Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormack). None of these tangents are fully explained or explored and only succeed in diffusing the tension invoked by the ticking clock of Bishop's impending doom.

The moments between Redford and Pitt are engaging, but alas too brief, while Scott's desire to impose too much of himself imbues Spy Game with a rich and stylised surface, but little depth.