Brad Pitt and Robert Redford in "Spy Game."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we give this film a: Stars: Robert Redford and Brad Pitt Director: Tony Scott Rated: R, with profanity, graphic violence and sexuality Length: 123 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(November 21, 2001) -- The CIA may be heroes in TV series at the moment, but the movies are another matter.

Spy Game, unlike Alias, 24 or The Agency (whose creator helped write this movie), doesn't worship at the agency's altar.

Robert Redford plays Nathan Muir, longtime covert-operations specialist for Central Intelligence who, on this particular day in 1991, is about to retire after 30 years of being a spy. The impression we are meant to get is that Muir is sorry to go -- but few of his superiors or interagency competitors are sad to see him leave.

Why 1991? So the film can be set against the backdrop of then-President Bush's trade talks with China. It's a big deal, one that a CIA operation gone-wrong in China might jeopardize.

Naturally, Muir's retirement is delayed when he gets wind of trouble in China. A former protege of his, Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt), has been caught by the Chinese while trying to sneak someone out of a Chinese prison. Now Muir's bosses need information about Bishop's mission, though they seem less than eager to get Bishop back.

The film is told in both the present and in flashbacks. In the present, Bishop has 24 hours to live before the Chinese execute him as a spy; it's up to Muir to find a way to spring him.

We flashback with Muir's stories about his work with Bishop, which began with a sniper assignment in 1975 Vietnam. As Muir is debriefed by his bosses, we see the missions in which Muir schooled Bishop in the art of being a spy, using other people's lives as pawns in a greater game.

The flashbacks, set in Vietnam, Berlin and Beirut, are crammed with the kind of visual snap-crackle-pop for which director Tony Scott is famous. This is not necessarily the same thing as actual dramatic tension.

If anything, the flashbacks are less important for their action razzle-dazzle than for the way new facets of Muir and Bishop are revealed: Muir, the pragmatist who still knows right from wrong; Bishop, the idealist (his code name is Boy Scout) who becomes disillusioned by the lack of a clearly identifiable enemy.

The film's only real suspense comes in the present, as the slippery, experienced Muir stays two moves ahead of his nemesis, the ambitious Charles Harker (Stephen Dillane), who wants to resolve the Bishop matter quickly and efficiently. But there are too few of these moments to gloss over the lack of energy in the other action scenes.

At times, Scott seems to be going for the propulsive pace of the Mission: Impossible movies, minus the latex masks and techno-hocus-pocus. Yet at other moments, what this film feels most like is a stage thriller about an interrogation of a wily agent. The flashback scenes of the movie would be recounted in dramatic monologues in a stage version; it would really be a more interesting film if we never saw Bishop at all.

Of course, then we'd have been denied the chance of seeing two of the movies' most famous blonds going head-to-head on screen. Redford's deadpan reserve works well when played against Pitt's sunny wisecracks.

Even together, however, they aren't enough to lift Spy Game beyond the mundane. There is inherent excitement to this story, but this movie squanders it at almost every opportunity.