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Spy Game | Description: The last working day of retiring CIA-agent Nathan Muir is going to be a long day as he fights against political forces to free Tom Bishop captured in Cina Year: 2001 Classification: Action Directed: - Tony Scott Actors/Actresses: - Robert Redford as Nathan Muir - Brad Pitt as Tom Bishop - Catherine McCormack as Elisabeth Hadley - Stephen Dillane as Charles Harker - Larry Bryggman as Troy Folger - Catherine Mccormack Not the usual retirement day party Because the actor appears so infrequently nowadays, the end of 2001 has delivered a relative flurry of Robert Redford films to the Big Screen - two, THE LAST CASTLE and SPY GAME. The latter was, for me, the most entertaining, though the former includes an Oscar-worthy supporting performance by James Gandolfini. In SPY GAME, Redford plays Nathan Muir, at the very end of a thirty-year career with the CIA. Before arriving at his Langley headquarters office on retirement day, he learns that a former protégé, Tom Bishop (played by Brad Pitt), has been imprisoned and condemned to death by the Red Chinese. Over the next 24 hours, Muir must race to save Bishop's life in the face of a high level CIA decision to sacrifice the incarcerated agent on the altar of the President's economic rapprochement with China. In the battle of wits with his weasely superiors, Muir must flashback for them (and the film's viewers) the history of his relationship with Bishop, which extends from 1975 Vietnam forward through Cold War Berlin and the war-torn Beirut of the mid 1980s. SPY GAME is flashy and extremely fast paced, the latter because of film editing which limits each continuous scene to no more than perhaps 15-20 seconds. It's far unlike one of my very favorite spy flicks of the past, THE RUSSIA HOUSE (1990), starring Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer. In the latter, the emphasis is on plot evolution and character development - a slower paced, thinking man's film. However, the differences between the two don't reflect badly on SPY GAME. Redford is too fine an actor to be involved in anything substandard, and watching his Muir persona run circles around his Langley superiors is one of the movie's chief delights. (When was the last clunker Redford starred in?). Pitt does a creditable and credible job as the young military sniper (trained to shoot in the Boy Scouts!) first employed by agent controller Muir for an assassination in Laos, and then permanently recruited for the Agency by Muir soon after the US scuttled out of Southeast Asia. SPY GAME did have its hiccups. I was unreasonably annoyed that the "Berlin" sequences were actually filmed in Budapest, probably because Berlin is one of my favorite cities. Actress Catherine McCormack's relatively cold performance as Bishop's love obsession didn't really click for me, though she was my heartthrob of the moment in DANGEROUS BEAUTY (1997). And, it seemed a bit much of a stretch for the Chinese correctional officer to connect bubblegum with a prison break. On the other hand, the depiction of chaotic and violent Beirut (filmed in Morocco) was masterfully done. Overall, the director succeeded in producing an intelligent and engrossing holiday thriller. And it's so good to see Redford back. Thus, 4.5 stars, rounded for Amazon to 5. "Spy Game" is fast-paced, thrilling, and thought-provoking!! "Spy Game" is just like any other espionage film that you have seen, but better! The film has two of the most dynamic stars that you'll ever see on the big screen...Robert Redford and Brad Pitt! And the fast-paced direction of Tony Scott ("Enemy of the State", "Crimson Tide") just couldn't be better! "Spy Game" calls the attention to Nathan Muir (Redford), a veteran CIA operative who has reached the very last day of his 30 year career in the CIA and is looking forward to retirement. But all of that has been put on hold when he learns that his protege Tom Bishop (Pitt) has been captured by the Chinese and is being held for espionage. But that is not the worst of it...because Bishop is also being sentenced to death as well! So, Muir has 24 hours to try to find a way to rescue both Bishop and his love interest (Catherine McCormack) before Bishop is executed. "Spy Game" is nothing more than a thinking person's movie with action, suspense, an excellent storyline, and a great supporting cast as well. This is Robert Redford's best suspenseful role since "Three Days of the Condor", Brad Pitt's best since "The Devil's Own", and Tony Scott's best directing since the always great "Enemy of the State". Even though this is the year 2002, "Spy Game", to me, is one of the 10 best films of 2001! Awful Yet another movie in which Robert Redford gets to reprise his role as an irritating know-all. He has played pretty much the same character for the last ten years, and this time the phoney sagacity emerges though the persona of a CIA commander handing out lines like 'don't ever question my orders again', 'you just lost ten seconds', and (yes) 'you're ten minutes late' to his fawning understrapper Brad Pitt. Yawn. Actually wasn't that last line followed by another admonitory cliché seconds later? Oh yes: 'Don't let it happen again.' By the way, this movie *is* marketed as a thriller. How behind the times is a film which still tries to portray the embattled North Vietnamese as an enemy requiring murderous force to extirpate? How confused is a movie in which Redford refers in one moment to the 'seventeen sects' in Lebanon and thereafter has to use the cumbersomely neutral locution of 'the Lebanese militia' to refer to the sect the US had sided with? How cliched is a movie which intercuts between a tuxedoed reception at an embassy and a gritty car-chase behind the iron curtain? Plus the enemy du jour is - surprise, surprise - the Chinese. The moviemakers' meticulous research and attention to detail is evdient throughout: Redford repeatedly pronounces Sheik as 'chic'; a scene opens with a shot of the Szabadság bridge in Budapest while the subtitle reads 'Berlin'; and of course stealing top-secret documents at Langley is simply a matter of distracting the secretary, swiping them off his desk and hiding them under your jacket. But I suppose you could just watch it for the garbled morals, the inapposite techno/dance soundtrack and director Tony Scott's frenetic swoop-then-freezeframe camerawork... Buy Spy Game at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  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