Movie Review: The Duchess (2008)

Genre: Historical Drama  

Director: Saul Dibb  

Starring: Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling, Dominic Cooper   

Running Time: 110 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1770s Britain, 17 year-old Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley) weds the exceptionally wealthy William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes), in a marriage arranged by her mother (Charlotte Rampling). It's a passionless union, with William not caring for Georgiana beyond his obsessive desire for a son. Georgiana distracts herself by getting involved in politics and befriending Lady Elizabeth Foster (Hayley Atwell), but William's shameless extra-marital affairs drive her to the arms of rising political star Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper).

What Works Well: Based on actual events, the fascinatingly turbulent story of a popular fashion icon trapped in a loveless marriage carries obvious parallels to her distant relative Diana. The adaptation of Amanda Foreman's book explores upper echelon societal tensions related to domestic roles and expected behaviours, and the different rules applied to men and women. Keira Knightley tests the limits of Georgina's reality with subtle glances and the occasional fire in her eyes. Even more impressive is Ralph Fiennes, deceptively understated as the Duke acts with the utmost certainty that his inherited privileges - male, wealth, title, influence - empower him to compromise on nothing. The lavish settings, attention-grabbing hairdos, and period wardrobes are augmented by an engaging Rachel Portman music score.  

What Does Not Work As Well: The attraction between Georgina and Charles Grey is only explained in terms of physical magnetism, and Dominic Cooper is provided with limited material to define Grey's stature. Similarly, Lady Foster's critical role in the Cavendish marriage sways with events rather through demonstrated character depth.

Key Quote:

Lady Foster: Well, as they say, the Duke of Devonshire must be the only man in England not in love with his wife.

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Movie Review: Georgy Girl (1966)

Genre: Romantic Dramedy  

Director: Silvio Narizzano  

Starring: Lynn Redgrave, James Mason, Alan Bates, Charlotte Rampling  

Running Time: 99 minutes  

Synopsis: In London, Georgy Parkin (Lynn Redgrave) is a frumpy but bubbly children's music teacher in her mid-20s. Georgy's unglamorous looks limits her romantic prospects, but the older, wealthy, and married James Leamington (James Mason) offers her a contract to be his mistress. Georgy's alluring roommate Meredith (Charlotte Rampling) is dating banker Jos (Alan Bates) among many other men. Jos and Georgy develop feelings for each other, but then Meredith announces she is pregnant with Jos' child.

What Works Well: The bright and breezy story of a misfit navigating relationships in swinging London shines a bright light on a rapidly changing society. Pre-marital sex, infidelity, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, open relationships, abortions, and adoptions all feature in the adaptation of Margaret Forster's book (she also co-wrote the screenplay). Director Silvio Narizzano adopts a matter-of-fact and shock-free attitude, and allows the unconstrained energy of Georgy, Jos, and especially Meredith to fill the screen, with Lynn Redgrave (romantic fragility hiding beneath a care-free facade) and Charlotte Rampling (audaciously blunt narcissism) the standout performers. The courageous ending seeks outcomes packed with new questions, while the iconic title song hints at be-careful-what-you-wish-for sarcasm.

What Does Not Work As Well: The introductory act is slow, and the segments featuring James Mason's character Leamington are particularly plodding. This is perhaps intentional to underline his generation being sidelined, but the loss of momentum is nevertheless palpable.

Conclusion: The messy outcomes of wholesale rule changes.

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Movie Review: Never Let Me Go (2010)

Genre: Alternative Reality Romantic Drama

Director: Mark Romanek

Starring: Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, Charlotte Rampling, Sally Hawkins

Running Time: 103 minutes

Synopsis: In England, a medical breakthrough in 1952 extends life expectancy to 100 years. In 1978, pre-teens Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy attend the Hailsham boarding school run by principal Emily (Charlotte Rampling). Teacher Lucy (Sally Hawkins) reveals that the children are destined to be repeat organ donors and will die early. Kathy is attracted to Tommy, but the more assertive Ruth claims his attention. In 1985, 18-year-old Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley), and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) transition to rustic residences at The Cottages, joining other donors in preparing for their fate.

What Works Well: The adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's book (with a script by Alex Garland) reveals its secrets with elegance and understated emotions. The societal and scientific contexts are confined to the deep background of a grey England, allowing Kathy and her friends to animate the centre. Their natural presence generates unsettling narrative power by challenging at the individual level what it means to be human and the ethics of organ harvesting. Carey Mulligan leads a stellar cast, mastering quiet emotion within downcast acceptance.

What Does Not Work As Well: The romantic triangle elements threaten to pull the drama towards routine, and the absence of broader perspectives and debate beyond the three protagonists borders on topical neglect. Side references attempting to inject meaning into art creation and gallery displays are largely fumbled.

Conclusion: Thought-provoking, but also frustratingly narrow in its ambition to seek solitary normalcy.

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Movie Review: Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

A private detective film noir, Farewell, My Lovely enhances an enticingly convoluted mystery with stinging attitude.

The setting is Los Angeles in 1941. Despondent private investigator Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is holed up in a hotel room and asks for a meeting with police detective Nulty (John Ireland) to go over recent events. Most of the rest of the film unfolds in flashback. 

Marlowe was hired by ex-convict Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran) to find his girlfriend Velma. Moose did not hear from Velma for six years while he served a sentence for an audacious heist. She used to be a lounge singer at the Florian Club, and Marlowe starts his search with trumpet player Tommy Ray and moves onto the widowed Jessie Florian (Sylvia Miles), but soon realizes he is being misled and Moose disappears.

Meanwhile a man called Marriott hires Marlowe as a bodyguard to help in the recovery of a stolen jade necklace. The assignment ends badly, but leads Marlowe to rich socialite Helen Grayle (Charlotte Rampling) and her sleazy friend Brunette (Anthony Zerbe), who offers Marlowe $2,000 to find Moose. Marlowe is soon roughed-up and face to face with whorehouse madam Frances Amthor (Kate Murtagh), his life in danger and having to sort out how all the threads are connected.

The second adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel and a worthy companion to the 1944 version with Dick Powell, Farewell, My Lovely captures the grim mood of a corruption-riddled Los Angeles. Director Dick Richards draws inspiration from a city teaming with cops on the take, criminals flaunting their wealth at high society parties and on-board glitzy yachts, while unfortunates like Tommy Ray and Jessie Florian are dumped onto the grimy sidelines of society.

Chandler's acidic prose is sardonically deployed to cut through the hidden agendas, and Robert Mitchum's laidback attitude perfectly embodies private investigator Philip Marlowe. An undercurrent of stress adds a welcome buzz to Mitchum's performance, as the film opens with Marlowe in undoubted trouble: too many people have died, and what started as an innocuous case has spiralled into a labyrinthian mystery.

This is a rare occasion where narration works well. Marlowe leads Nulty through the twists and turns of overlapping cases, and while Chandler's hallmark narrative complexities are preserved, Richards navigates around enough signposts to maintain plot coherence.

And Farewell, My Lovely benefits from plenty of heart. Greed and narcissism literally bash Marlowe on the head more than once, but he keeps his focus on what matters: a lovestruck giant of a man looking for his woman, a sad old widow pathetically surviving on fleeting memories, and a young baseball fan confined to a decrepit motel room because of cruel intolerance. As the body count mounts, caring for the afflicted is the only emotional refuge.



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Movie Review: Red Sparrow (2018)

An espionage thriller, Red Sparrow features a strong Jennifer Lawrence performance but is poorly executed.

In Russia, Dominika (Jennifer Lawrence) is a famed Russian ballerina who also looks after her sick mother. When Dominika suffers a seemingly accidental career-ending on-stage leg break, her uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts) first uses her as bait in an assassination mission and then recruits her into the Red Sparrow spy school, where Russians are trained to be lethal agents with expertise in psychology and seduction.

Under the tutelage of the Matron (Charlotte Rampling), Dominika proves in training that she is as ruthless as her uncle, but resents his manipulation of her life. She is assigned to get close to CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), now in Budapest after fleeing from Moscow. Dominika's mission is to get Nate to reveal the identity of a high ranking Russian mole. The two spies get close to each other, and both have to find a way to get what they need in a high stakes game.

Directed by Francis Lawrence and based on a book by Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow is overlong and from about its halfway point, almost incomprehensible. Despite the needlessly prolonged 140 minutes of running time, Lawrence and his screenwriter Justin Haythe spectacularly botch the pacing, tension and key plot points.

Which is a pity, because up until the end of Dominika's training scenes Red Sparrow is a decent enough spy story with a strong character at its core, an intriguing Russian perspective, and a suitably grey, cold aesthetic. Jennifer Lawrence is another plus, fully dedicated to the role, commanding the screen and injecting a steely spine into the role.

It all goes sideways once Dominika and Nate meet. Important facts, key characters and crucial events start to wade in and out of the story with a bewildering lack of cohesion. The plot gets distracted by US Senator's aid Stephanie Boucher (Mary-Louise Parker) being suddenly drop kicked into (and then out of) the story as a wannabe traitor. Dominika's roommate in Budapest Marta is also sketched in and out, contributing seemingly key information in undecipherable snippets.

The Russian station chief in Budapest alternates between doofus and menace, and numerous senior intelligence chiefs on both the American and Russian sides (including Jeremy Irons and Ciaran Hinds) contribute little of value except more shallow obfuscation. Motivations are lost, explanations are skipped, and the film totally loses its way.

Dominika and Nate share no chemistry, and nothing that either of them has to say rings true, because their core business is lying. Several torture ordeals follow, but the impact is absent because the characters are adrift in an emotional void. Somewhere in the scattered debris of the script Dominika is plotting an elaborate ruse that becomes clear in the final scene, and by then the dots are well and truly not worth connecting.

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Movie Review: D.O.A. (1988)

A murder mystery, D.O.A. possesses some obvious style but is badly let-down by a weak script.

In a rainstorm at Christmas time, Professor Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid) stumbles into a police station and announces that he has been murdered. He recounts the past 36 hours of his life and the rest of the film unfolds in flashback. Dexter teaches English literature, and his talented but troubled student Nick (Robert Knepper), an aspiring writer, shockingly appears to commit suicide by throwing himself off a campus building roof. Dexter and his wife Gail (Jane Kaczmarek) are going through a painful divorce, while his friend Hal (Daniel Stern) is celebrating a promotion and the upcoming publication of a book.

After a night of heavy drinking with his attractive and starstruck student Sydney (Meg Ryan), Dexter discovers that he has been poisoned and has just hours to live. His frantic investigation leads him to Nick's funeral, where Nick's sponsor Mrs. Fitzwaring (Charlotte Rampling), her daughter Cookie (Robin Johnson) and the family chauffeur Bernard (Christopher Neame) are hiding shocking secrets of their own.

Co-directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, D.O.A. is as remake of the 1949 film noir. The 1988 version finds modest success with a few stylistic elements, but overall sinks into a sea of familiar and overstuffed plot elements. The mystery is uninteresting, the perpetrator easy to guess, and the evil plot, once revealed, borders on the ridiculous.

The opening 20 minutes are promising enough. The opening scene hits the target, a near-collapse Dexter storming into the police station and announcing his own murder. The professor and his surrounding circle of students, colleagues and family are introduced with admirable efficiency planting the seeds for what could have been an engaging story. Dexter has given up on writing, Gail has given up on the marriage, Nick is tortured and seeking affirmation, Sydney is salivating for a shot at her professor (despite Meg Ryan, at 27, being too old for the role) and the circle of academics contains the usual wolves in tweed clothing.

But after Nick's death, D.O.A. unravels quickly. Both Dexter's behaviour and his emotions are poorly written and sloppily executed, and the film descends into a series of contrived conflicts, more crimes and murders, and clumsy attempts at suspense. The story wades knee deep into convolutions that may have worked with more talent, in black and white, and in the 1940s. Here, the sordid affairs of Mrs. Fitzwaring, her multiple husbands, out-of-control daughter and menacing chauffeur are tiresome and derivative distractions.

The body count mounts at an alarming pace, and if it wasn't already too easy to guess the murderer, it gets much simpler as the rest of the cast members are methodically knocked off, seemingly without attracting a single investigative police officer.

Dennis Quaid struggles against the weak material and comes up empty, and the rest of the cast members barely register. It may not exactly be dead on arrival, but D.O.A. expires early in any event.

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Movie Review: Night Train To Lisbon (2013)

A morose political drama and romance, Night Train To Lisbon packs in plenty of plot but remains more ponderous than provocative.

In Berne, grey professor Raimund (Jeremy Irons) rescues a woman before she can jump off a bridge. She promptly flees, and in her coat pocket Raimund finds a book and a train ticket to Lisbon. Impulsively he hops onto the train, and en route reads the book, which turns out to be a memoir by Amadeu (Jack Huston), a young aristocratic Portuguese doctor. Raimund is deeply affected by the lyrical prose, and in Lisbon goes looking for the author. He visits Amadeu's sister Adriana (Charlotte Rampling), and learns that the doctor died in 1974.

Through a fortuitous accident Raimund meets optometrist Mariana (Martina Gedeck), whose uncle João (Tom Courtenay) knew Amadeu. Raimund also talks to Amadeu's teacher, the priest Father Bartolomeu (Christophe Lee). Slowly Raimund pieces together the history of a group of idealistic college graduates involved in the underground resistance against the Salazar dictatorship in the early 1970s. The group consisted of Amadeu, his best friend Jorge (August Diehl), João and the beautiful Estefânia (Mélanie Laurent). As Raimund learns about the struggles and loves of the young activists, he questions his own restrained life.

An adaptation of the Pascal Mercier novel directed Bille August, Night Train To Lisbon has ambitions to be an intellectual and literary mystery. While the tone is earnest, the pacing thoughtful, and the content rich, the film also leans towards excessive self-absorption. August succumbs early and often to narration consisting of excerpts from Amadeu's book that may or may not be profound, but are certainly out of place. And Raimund's entire search-for-identity quest is off target, his suddenly instinctive and persistent actions inconsistent with the character.

The girl-on-the-bridge opening is a beguiling mystery, but the film takes far too long to circle back to the incident, and overall no one in Lisbon appears to hesitate before revealing long held personal secrets to the inquisitive stranger from Berne. And far too much time is spent with Raimund going back and forth between Adriana and Jorge, the plotline revealed through intentionally interrupted drips that may work on the written page but not in a 110 minute screen treatment.

The flashback scenes, where the film spends a good half of its running time, come with their own problems. The acting talent is generally about two levels down from the likes of Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling and Christopher Lee, and the young activists appear to exist out of context. August spends next to no time establishing the framework of the Salazar regime, and tries to fit a full plot about young anti-government agitators, complete with a love triangle, into half of a movie's length. Not unexpectedly it all comes across as half-baked and borderline amateurish.

Night Train To Lisbon has good intentions to recount a worthwhile story, but is thwarted by clumsy execution.

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The Movies Of Charlotte Rampling

All movies starring Charlotte Rampling and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Georgy Girl (1966)

Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

The Verdict (1982)

Angel Heart (1987)

D.O.A. (1988)

Spy Game (2001)

The Duchess (2008)

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Night Train To Lisbon (2013)

45 Years (2015)

Red Sparrow (2018)

Dune: Part One (2021)

Dune: Part Two (2024)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Angel Heart (1987)

A mix of film noir, horror and the supernatural, Angel Heart finds a good mood but veers towards literal and figurative overkill in its second half.

New York, 1955. Two-bit Manhattan private detective Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) is called to Harlem and hired by the mysteriously well-dressed and wealthy Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to find out whether a pre-war crooner by the show-biz name of Johnny Favorite is alive or dead. Favorite was badly hurt in the war, and is supposed to be in a vegetative state in hospital, but Cyphre suspects a ruse. He claims to have a contract with Favorite and wants to make sure that the singer is not reneging on his end of the deal by faking long-term sickness or death.

Angel snoops around the hospital and indeed finds a cover-up. A doctor Fowler was paid a lot of money to pretend that Favorite remained a long-term patient. Instead, the bandaged but recovering singer was smuggled out of the hospital in 1943 by a man and a woman who took him south. Angel's investigation leads him to New Orleans, where he meets Favorite's pre-war associates including fortune teller Margaret Krusemark (Charlotte Rampling), musician Toots Sweet (Brownie McGhee),  and the passionate Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), the daughter of Favorite's former lover. Angel finds himself embroiled in the dangerous world of the occult, just as people start showing up dead all around him, victims of gruesome murders.

Director Alan Parker himself created the screenplay out of the William Hjortsberg 1978 novel Falling Angel, and the emphasis is on atmosphere, symbolism and a prevailing sense of dread. The film is punctuated by hallucinatory interludes featuring figures shrouded in black, blood-splattered walls, slowly rotating fans, mirrors, clattering elevator doors throwing large shadows on the wall, and disturbingly omnipresent chickens. Parker plays with light, silhouettes and the juxtaposition of reality, imagination and memory fragments, and Angel Heart works well as an unhinging, dangerous and stylish piece of film making.

The plot is less successful. The second half of the film starts to resemble a train wreck, as characters are introduced and unceremoniously killed-off in macabre fashion. Chickens are sacrificed, rabid dogs are unleashed, henchmen jump out of the shadows, and both internal and external organs are misused for heinous purposes. It's all in the service of a narrative arc that firmly sets its course towards a supernatural resolution, but in the process Parker shortchanges his characters. When the twist ending arrives, it feels rushed. A more thorough, less sensationalist-obsessed exploration of both the contract between Cyphre and Favorite and Favorite's attempt to escape his obligations would have helped maintain a better balance between mysterious and mythical.

Mickey Rourke is quite excellent, and delivers a confident performance as a low-profile gumshoe thrust into a high stakes maze riddled with death. Robert De Niro makes a theatrical impact in just a few scenes, focussing on enigmatic presence as he eats an egg as a history lesson in domination and fills out large empty rooms with oozing manipulation. Lisa Bonet shocked the world at the time by jumping from a wholesome image on television's family-friendly The Cosby Show and into the earthy role of the 17 year old chicken-killing, voodoo dabbling, single mother Epiphany, and sharing a steamy and yet horrifying sex scene with Rourke.

Angel Heart is dark, unsettling, and imaginative but also ultimately too quick to favour gore over noir.

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Movie Review: 45 Years (2015)

An in-depth look at a ripe marriage, 45 Years asks questions about secrets by omissions, and tests the resiliency of a long-term union. The film enjoys two exceptional performances from Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, but has relatively thin material to play with.

Retiree couple Kate and Geoff Mercer (Rampling and Courtenay) live quietly in the English countryside and are approaching their 45th wedding anniversary. He is starting to mentally slow down, while she remains healthy and alert. Their life is rocked to its foundation when a letter arrives to inform Geoff that the body of his lover from 45 years ago, a woman named Katya, has been discovered beneath a melting glacier in Switzerland, where she died while on a hiking vacation with Geoff.

He is devastated by the reawakened memories, and now reveals to Kate the depth of his love and infatuation with Katya, how they considered themselves effectively married, and that he fully intended to spend the rest of his life with Katya had she stayed alive. Suddenly feeling very much second best, Kate is forced to reassess her marriage and the last 45 years of her life, as the anniversary party fast approaches.

Written and directed by Andrew Haigh, 45 Years is a two-person psychological study, with Kate engaged in most of the thinking and Geoff almost happily surrendering to memories. As the thick layer of accumulated years cracks and doubts creeps in, the film unfolds in silent intensity. Consistent with the English middle class propensity to be more reserved than animated, when Kate is abruptly forced to re-examine her marriage, the outcome is not measured in histrionics, but rather in questions pondered but not posed, and answers concluded without being spoken.

With Kate in full reflective mode, Haigh makes clever use of mirrors and screens to emphasize her forced re-examination of a life that once seemed straightforward. Kate cannot help but catch glimpses of herself in mirrors, and she starts to frequently see Geoff indirectly through his reflection. In one of the film's highlights, Kate delves into her husband's past through an old-fashioned slide show and an ad-hoc screen, the old images seen from behind while the camera stares at Kate absorbing, for the first time, a pivotal love in her husband's life.

Contemplation does win the battle with conversation, and 45 Years encounters a problem. The film only runs for the 95 minutes, and plenty of screen time is invested in observing Kate emotionally struggle in silence. Charlotte Rampling carries the weight and projects the internal conflict between a piercing sense of betrayal and the plain facts of a life well lived, but she alone cannot inject enough heart into the film. The pace slows to a crawl, as there is only so much drama that can be squeezed out of abstract events from 45 years prior. When on-screen happenings and on-screen interactions are both most prominent by their absence, forward momentum almost completely stalls.

Despite the narrative scarcity, 45 Years is a worthwhile introspective exploration of marital foundations unexpectedly shifting, late in the cycle of life.

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Movie Review: The Verdict (1982)

A character study hampered by a shaky story, The Verdict serves as a showcase for the brilliant talent of Paul Newman, but otherwise frustrates as a courtroom drama.

In Boston, Frank Galvin (Newman) is a washed-up lawyer. A once brilliant career has now been reduced to chasing ambulances and gatecrashing funerals in a desperate search for clients. Frank is spending his days at the bar, drinking heavily and heading towards self-destruction. His mentor and one remaining friend Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden) reminds Frank that he does have one more case coming to court, a medical malpractice suit that has languished for 18 months. During childbirth a botched anesthetic procedure left a woman on life support and in a vegetative state. Her family is eager to settle, as is the hospital, and a generous offer is made. But Frank visits the incapacitated victim, and something inside him stirs. Against all advice, he decides to take the case to court.

The high-priced and high-powered defence team is led by the slick Ed Concannon (James Mason). Frank and Mickey scrape together their case in a matter of days, while Frank starts a relationship with Laura (Charlotte Rampling), a lonely woman he meets at the bar. With Judge Hoyle (Milo O'Shea) presiding over a jury trial, Frank builds a flimsy argument around a dubious expert witness in the form of Dr. Thompson (Joe Seneca), and doggedly pursues as additional witnesses nurses Maureen Rooney (Julie Bovasso) and Kaitlin Costello (Lindsay Crouse), who may provide key evidence to turn the argument in his favour.

More about character than story, The Verdict is a measured study of redemption and one man's struggle to reclaim himself. Frank Galvin was once a respected partner in a law firm, but circumstances knocked him wildly off course. The film creates a tentative hero out of a lawyer who insists on standing for something, more out of a desperate need to save himself than any imperative to serve his client.

Paul Newman provides the one reason to watch and enjoy The Verdict. After a string of relatively mediocre performances dating back to the early 1970s, Newman simmers again as Frank Galvin. He brings to life a character aging early and creeping towards total moral bankruptcy and utter dependence on the bottle. And yet Newman finds the morsel of caring that Frank still carries, enough to reawaken his passion for a once proud career when he comes face to face with a great injustice. Just as much as Frank finds his case, Newman finds his film, and relaunches his dominant screen presence.

The David Mamet script navigates Frank's rejuvenation with reasonable surety, and allows his self-doubt to remain close to the surface, poking his fragile confidence at regular intervals. But the rest of the story fails to surround the central character with a worthwhile narrative. The court room drama is tepid, Frank's final speech is not nearly as compelling as it pretends to be, and the trial's outcome aims at simplicity rather than intricacy. Laura is never convincing as a love interest, her role in Frank's re-engagement easily predictable. James Mason and Jack Warden are as sturdy as can be expected, but neither Ed Concannon nor Mickey Morrissey have any kind of a progressive arc.

Director Sidney Lumet keeps Newman at the centre of almost every scene and finds good locations for Frank's office and his bar hangout. The film is indoor bound, and there are few flourishes to raise the drama above the average.

The Verdict carries impressive star quality, but is guilty of providing inadequate support.

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Movie Review: Spy Game (2001)

Episodic and unconvincing, Spy Game is a disappointingly muddled movie. Neither the action nor the story deliver the requisite realism, with stars Robert Redford and Brad Pitt left to fend for themselves against poor material.

It's 1991, and CIA agent Tom Bishop (Pitt) is attempting to rescue a captive from a Chinese prison by impersonating a doctor. It all goes wrong and Bishop himself is apprehended and subjected to torture. Bishop's mission is unauthorized, and back at CIA headquarters in Langley, Bishop's former partner Nathan Muir (Robert Redford), one day away from retirement, is grilled by his superiors regarding what he may know about Bishop and the covert assignment.

With the clock ticking down towards Bishop's execution by the Chinese, Muir recounts their history together, including a sniper mission towards the end of the Vietnam war, narrow escapes on the wrong side of the Berlin wall, and an attempt on the life of a terrorist leader in war-torn Beirut. In this last mission, Bishop meets and falls in love with aid worker Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormack), who has a dark past of her own. The romance leads to a rift between Bishop and Muir, and may help explain Bishop's ill-fated infiltration of China. Muir has to figure out how to help his former partner while fending off the Agency's bureaucrats who are more interested in protecting reputations than rescuing one of their own.

The central story of Spy Game takes place in and around a meeting room in Langley, with Muir all too easily outsmarting a gaggle of CIA suits, and still managing to deke in and out of the room to untangle Bishop's mission and arrange a rescue attempt despite being under intense scrutiny. The script by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata does not come close to making any of this persuasive, least of all the hours spent supposedly going through historical missions while Bishop's life is under imminent threat.

Spy Game is a bit better in recounting previous episodes from Muir's partnership with Bishop, but even these quickly sacrifice realism for perfunctory thrills, with each successive mission stretching the limits of credulity. Spy Game finally settles into director Tony Scott's zone of comfort, where all is kinetic and nothing is believable, undercutting with finality the movie's supposed purpose of having a stab at the grim realities of modern spy life.

Redford and Pitt do their best, salvaging some interest by quickly settling into the roles of cold-hearted mentor and passionate mentee, but the material is superficial and thin for the actors to do much between the attack helicopters, car chases, and explosions. McCormack's role is minor and registers the single key, while the likes of David Hemmings and Charlotte Rampling are available to provide interest but get dismissively ignored and consigned to mere minutes.

Spy Game is a germ of a good story stomped by the heavy boot of slip shod execution and a cheap sale to thrills over thought.

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