SPY GAME

Spy Game
Director – Tony Scott
Starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt

MPAA - Rated R for language, some violence and brief sexuality.

This is a fantastic tale of espionage, friendship, and love. Robert Redford is an aging CIA agent who, on the eve of his retirement, learns of a young recruit’s captures in Red China. As he quickly uses his long developed contacts and skills to understand the situation, he learns of the CIA’s reluctance to help, and a secret agenda to leave the young recruit to a Chinese execution.

Robert Redford is the classic smart and witty retiree. His part has been played in many movies by many of the greats but Redford does a great job carrying the movie.
Any one hoping to see Brad Pitt in action may be a little disappointed because this is Robert Redford’s movie. Redford’s Nathan Muir maneuvers deftly through the halls of the CIA headquarters making his supervisors head spins as he plays them for information while feeding them tidbits. He is quick with good lines and makes a relatively easy script interesting and fun to listen too. Redford has a rich voice that is soothing to listen to and as he narrates a lot of scenes it is a great voice over.




Pitt is excellent as always but is only in about a third of the film. He had the challenge of making a smaller but vital role interesting and believable and he did a good job. He is a CIA operative who has a long relationship working under Nathan Muir in Vietnam, Berlin, and in Beirut. We see him grow from a Boy Scout soldier in the Jungles of Vietnam to a skilled operative falling in love with a dangerous mark in Beirut. He is an emotional character who brings in an excellent human element that the audience can connect to.



Tony Scott the director of “Man on Fire”, “Déjà vu”, and of course “Top Gun”, does a brilliant job here with stunning cinematography. The camera angles and views are not nearly as trippy as the Denzel Washington hit “Man of Fire”, but this is still a visually gripping film. In fact those made sick by the film on acid look of “Domino” and “Man on Fire” will appreciate the less explosive film-making style. There is one amazing scene done in Berlin with Redford and Pitt having coffee on the top of a building where the helicopter shots are brilliant. The two talk back and forth while the camera rotates around them showing the city in the background and really capturing the tension in the conversation with the wide shots and rotating cameras.



All in all Spy Game is a great dramatic thriller. The friendship, an almost father/son relationship, that builds up between Redford and Pitt is touching, and really helps to carry the movie. The script is a little weak and the characters are both pretty stock. We see them in many different films with fairly similar plots, but the two leads here make the movie very interesting, and there are enough twists in the plat to keep it going. I definitely recommend this film, it is not the best but the cinematography and the acting make the movie a worthy view; 7.5 out of 10.




Sex/Nudity - 2 out of 10 – A man and woman are seen asleep in bed together. It is assumed they have had sex, she is covered from the shoulders down and he is seen bare chested. We see her bare back in a pan shot. The intro to Baywatch is seen with lots of scantily clad men and women.

Violence/Gore – 7 out of 10 – A man is electrocuted when trying to plug into an outlet. People are shown getting vaccine injections. There are some gunfights and shootouts. A bomb blows up a building; some people are pulled from the wreckage some limbs missing. A man is shown being punched on the face while being interrogated. His face is very bruised and bloody. A war clinic is shown with people’s injuries being treated.

Profanity – 15 “F” words, 10 or so other uses of the “S” word, “D” word and a few religious exclamations.