Spy Game ***
Directed by: Tony Scott
Written by: Michael Frost Beckner (story and screenplay) and David Arata (screenplay)
Starring: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane
Rated R (violence, some language, bad situations all around)
“What wicked webs we weave when we practice to deceive.” – A Quotation by something Shakespeare wrote that seems to make a good intro to a movie about espionage.
Spy Game is... well, just look at the title. It’s not a Merchant-Ivory costume drama. It’s a movie about spies. Actually, it’s a movie about when spies had to stop acting like spies in the early 1990s.
The year is 1991. The Berlin Wall is down. The first George Bush is President. And something not exactly nice is going on with the spooks at the CIA. Nathan Muir (Redford) is an agent, and is retiring. Today. He’s awakened by a phone call from the American Embassy in Hong Kong. One of Muir’s proteges has gotten into a bit of a mess in China. Seems that Tom Bishop (Pitt) was trying to pull a rescue operation in a Chinese prison, and things went poorly. This couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the President is just about to head to China to secure a trade agreement. The head spooks, led by Charles Harker (Dillane), want to know what Muir knows about Bishop. Muir wants to know what exactly is going on, and why the CIA hasn’t just pulled an extraction. 3...2...1... make plot twist go NOW!
Spy movies are convoluted, and they should be. Spy Game isn’t in the James Bond mode of spy films. It’s more of a Tom Clancy type story. More believable, but with fewer dangerously hot bad girls and explosions.
Spy Game is drenched in cinematic style. You’re always aware that you are watching a movie. But, that’s one of Tony Scott’s (brother of Ridley Scott) strong points. He also made Top Gun and Crimson Tide. He makes slick, commercial films. Sort of like a better version of Michael Bay. Surprisingly, the quick-cut style, wacky filters, and shifts of frame-rate work well in this flick. It looks good, it sounds good, and, feels good for ¾ of the movie.
Why only ¾? It’s not because of Tony Scott, or any of the actors. Redford plays a company man who knows when and how to cross the line, and does it well. Brad Pitt is Robert Redford if Redford had chosen to be a character actor instead of a leading man. Stephen Dillane is good at being slimy. So, it comes down to the story, then, doesn’t it?
And, the story is good, up until the end. Most of the movie is done in flashback, with Muir explaining his history with Bishop – from Vietnam, to Berlin, to Lebanon. Any one of these stories on its own would have made a pretty good movie on its own. Actually, Spy Game almost feels like a series of short films. The bits that happen in the film’s “present” are good, too. Up until the end. With the sort of build-up presented, you expect a bigger ending than what you get. The ending is (mostly) plausible, but, it needed something more. Explosions, or a shoot-out, or a fight, or something. It just didn’t feel right. It plays something like the espionage version of The Usual Suspects, only without Keyser Soze. Apart from that quibble, it’s certainly watchable, and, probably should be seen more than once, just to get all the details. I think I may have missed some, due to some technical problems that were fixed quite easily, but, they happened during the second reel when most of the exposition was going on. So, my suspension-of-disbelief was suspended, and the rest of my understanding suffered because of it.
