Brad Pitt managed to exude more charm and charisma in the 30 seconds of screen time he had in a trailer for Ocean’s 11 than he did during two hours of Spy Game.
Don’t blame Pitt though; the fault lies almost entirely at the feet of Tony Scott, whose ham-fisted directorial style gives the movie all the passion and vision of a Volkswagen Jetta commercial. Scott uses a vast repertoire of cheesy transitions, over-dressed sets and violent camera moves to remind you whenever possible that it’s only a movie, and wastes the talent of two “A” list stars in the process. My personal favorite bit of cheese is the ever-present Teletype in the corner that freezes the action while it rat-a-tat-tats the current time on the screen. Scott hasn’t learned a new trick since Top Gun.
As for the plot: Pitt’s character falls in love with an unappealing social worker in Lebanon, who, as it turns out, is actually a terrorist on the lam from the both the British and Chinese governments. Somehow this makes her more appealing to Pitt, who goes rogue and breaks into a top-security Chinese prison to free her, getting caught in the process.
Robert Redford’s character brought Pitt into the Agency – a story told in flashbacks – so he ends up sitting in a fancy glass room in CIA headquarters trying to save Pitt’s life while evil, ruthless bureaucrats want to let Pitt fry, just because he went nuts, invaded another country and attempted to free an international terrorist.
I never managed to give much of a rat’s ass about Pitt’s character. I actively wanted the love interest to die. Only Robert Redford walked out holding his head high. He somehow managed to carve a real character for himself out of the scraps given to him by screenwriter Michael Frost Beckner, who also wrote the budget-busting stinker Cutthroat Island, which is entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest money loser for a film company ever. What happened to, “You’ll never work in this town again?”
To sum up: crappy director teams with crappy writer to waste the talent of everyone else involved, but Redford somehow still manages to make himself more appealing than the rest of the film combined.
May 4th, 2003 at 3:41 pm
I dig your movie reviews. This should be a regular feature. are you sure you are not gay?