Spy Game | Review

I wish I knew why whenever an employee is just minutes shy from retirement in a Hollywood movie, they pull him away from the promised land of sun and fun and back into the dark underworld of evil and mega overtime hours. Tony Scott’s Spy Game sounds great just by the title and the two premium actors pictured on the movie poster (check out those cool shades) but the potential for the makings of a semi-cold war spy film is guttered by a bad mixture of the wrong ingredients.

The majority of the problems lie with the film’s narrative overplayed in this annoying series of flashbacks. In theory, this film has promise being set within several time periods-sprinkled about in politically charged hotspots of China, Nam, East Germany, and Beirut. However, the film spends a little too much time giving the viewer this back-story (which is great for location shooting and a couple of big explosions) which takes up too much time from the picture. The back-story serves very little purpose when it comes time to explaining the complex working relationship or the character motivations of Brad Pitt (Seven) as Tom Bishop and Robert Redford (All the President’s Men) as Nathan Muir. Some of the more mystifying points come with the reasoning and purpose of Redford’s character in becoming this 24-hour misfit ready to throw away his entire life-savings on a danger-boy who has knack for narrowly escaping potential life-threatening situations and who is in dire need of some serious obedience training. It is especially seems unlikely that he is trying to redeem himself from a past that asked for integrity and calculated-callus method of operation planning. Why would he do this after his own protégé would deliberately taint himself by the evil “woman”. Another announce in the plot, which I found hard to conceive was how one man could carry out a big military operation under heavy surveillance and with a couple of well-placed phone calls. For the most part, the narrative is either too explained-never straying away from this open poker hand concoction or simply too boring-what happened to a couple of twists and turns rather than the high five slap on the back insignificant annotations.

The action sequences (a little to few if you ask me) have their value, and there is a nice composition in the shots with the exception of this one scene during the half way mark of the film where the camera seems to be turning around in circles over the high top of a building zooming in and out of the characters in the frame. Unfortunately, the film’s make-up department had either no talent or no luck in creating the aging process. They should have considered putting Redford and Pitt profiles away from the focus of the camera, lights and crappy filtered lenses-effects and instead simply placed the subjects with their back towards the camera. It kind of throws the viewer off when the characters appear to be the same when decades have somehow taken place.

One of the rare pleasures of this film is seeing the pair of high-caliber actors. There is a certain level of satisfaction out of seeing Redford (who has never had a bad hair day in his life) and Pitt who looks great when he is all bloodied and bruised up like in Fight Club and Snatch, however I found it hard to find any reason to care for the characters in which they played, partially because they seemed almost one dimensional through-out a film that clocks in just over two hours- a tad too long in my estimation.

Another disappointment in the film lies with the paltry dialogue and the lack of bang and excitement for your movie dollar. Instead, Scott depends a little too much on the star power to deliver a storyline that fizzles out from the beginning and slams on the brakes at exactly the wring time. Harry Gregson-Williams’ score succeeds in disguising some of the more dreary moments in the film but that alone does not do much for the film. Spy Game is an anti-climatic film, which will get a good reception at the box-office but will collect dust in our memories.

Rating 1.5 stars