Friday, March 25, 2016

Spy Game (2001)

Director: Tony Scott

Writers: Michael Frost Beckner, David Arata

Composer: Harry Gregson-Williams

Starring: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane, Larry Bryggman, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Matthew Marsh, Shane Rimmer, David Hemmings, Charlotte Rampling, Dale Dye

More info: IMDb

Tagline: It's not how you play the game. It's how the game plays you.

Plot: Retiring CIA agent Nathan Muir recalls his training of Tom Bishop while working against agency politics to free him from his Chinese captors.



My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Hmmmm.  The more I see of Redford the more I dig the guy and that's a lot, btw.  He plays cool, calm and calculated so well that I suspect he's probably not too unlike that in real life.  Brad Pitt is pretty much Brad Pitt.  He doesn't detract from the picture but he doesn't sell it in a way that suggests you couldn't have gotten any number of other actors to fill the role just as easily.  Movie beef number 8 zillion...must we almost always have a love interest?  Can't someone be really efficient at their espionage job to the point of not falling for someone who will jeopardize their safety?  Gee whiz!  Every scene with Redford is solid.  He's fantastic.  He completely sells a sense of calm urgency and you feel confident if anyone, he's the guy that's going to deliver the goods and save the day and it's damn fun watching him do it.  The supporting cast is great, too, and Tony Scott sure knew how to make a good picture.  The anamorphic widescreen print on the Universal Collector's Edition DVD looks good and the disc sports "Over 10 hours of DVD entertainment" including featurettes, alternate versions and deleted scenes and two commentaries.

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