Spy game - Jeu d'espions

Spy Game is an action thriller film directed by Tony Scott and starring Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane, Larry Bryggman and Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

CIA agent Nathan Muir is retiring and learns that his friend is incarcerated in China, he takes it upon himself to free him from the Chinese.

One of the most underrated films of Tony Scott, the film is very much engaging and the viewers who likes espionage spy thrillers will surely like the film. We have seen many edge of the seat spy thriller but this film is quite different from other films, the film will demand your patience due to it's slow speed but will not disappoint you.

Acting is superb and both Redford and Pitt were quite impressive in their respective roles. The screenplay of the film is slow but still have the ingredients to keep you engaged.

Climax of the film is good and satisfying, this film is not the typical spy thriller film but still a great entertainer. A Must watch underrated film.

You can rely on Robert Redford and Brad Pitt for polished performances and action director Tony Scott (Crimson Tide, Enemy Of The State, True Romance, Top Gun) will always keep the pace of a movie galloping along, but will the mix necessary produce a quality movie?

Spy Game is essentially about the foibles of humanity. Even seasoned hard nosed spies can have softer moments you know.

Nathan Muir (Redford) is on his last day as a spy with the CIA when his protégéé Tom Bishop (Pitt) gets nabbed on an unauthorised mission trying to break someone out of a Chinese Prison. Bishop is going to be executed in 24 hours unless Muir can do something.

Muir realises that the CIA is going to dump Bishop for the sake of impending trade talks. We are treated to a series of extended flashbacks to Vietnam, Berlin and Beirut which chronicle Muir and Bishop's relationship.

Spy Game is mostly a boys own story with lots of explosions showing smart men outwitting the opposition. As Muir teaches Bishop his tradecraft we're introduced to how spies are taught to case a restaurant, fix a radio, vomit on demand.

We're told how they are trained to be callous, to look at the big picture, to stay remote, to sell out people if that's of use. They're taught how to kill.

And we're shown again and again the CIA assassinating people, causing civil unrest, authorising explosions, arranging murders. The film makes no apologies for this but implies that for the good of the free world, well someone has to do it. Spy Game certainly surfs sweetly on American patriotism.

Spy Game is predictably interesting though mainly because of Robert Redford who still has that million dollar smile and Brad Pitt who mixes boyish charm with a slight degree of angst.

Tony Scott's film making style however really needs to slow down. Relentless pace and swooping cameras are eventually tiring and they don't give time to contemplate. Still, Spy Game is slick and informative. I'm damn glad I don't live in a war zone.

3 Blown Apart Flys

There are many reasons why we like a movie or not. For me, this is the case in witch small things were enough to like it: the two main actors, the places in which the action occurs, and the fact that it has more to do with a love affair, in a tragic atmosphere than about spies. Well, of course this is about spies - two of them - and mostly about the relation between them; if they are similar enough to understand each other, they are also different enough to generate some tension in the relation.

Maybe this is more about how the characters move around each others than about action or intrigue. In fact this is so obvious that the way in which the story is told is mostly in flashback, with Muir (Robert Redford) introducing all of them and narrating part. So, the story is the story and the spy game is what Muir does within the CIA, in 24 hours or so. The distinction is important because if you think of this as a traditional spy movie (maybe like the Bourne Identity or Supremacy) it has two obvious flaws for the genre: the plot is very simple (maybe predictable) and there's no bad guy, no one to kill or to revenge; there's also almost no genuine action, and, as far as I can remember, Bishop (Brad Pitt) only fires one weapon in the whole movie. Maybe what mislead most of the people was the title of the movie, and maybe that's why most of them didn't like it. However, in my opinion, this is a very good movie, with strong leading roles and a compelling story.

No gadgets, no arms, no villains, no action...oh, no,this is a whole different game, and it's a serious and a dangerous game: the game of people and their relations.

That's my big takeaway for this film. It reminds me of good old-fashioned filmmaking where there was a good script, there were good actors and there was good videography. You just can't make them like this anymore. People who have seen the Sting with Robert Redford will feel a bit nostalgic watching this film. I also put the Mechanic in my title because it reminds me of when Jan-Michael Vincent and Charles Bronson made another fabulous film about spies and espionage.

Some people call this a spy film but I disagree, this is a film about two spies who have a deep respect for each other and know their craft well - or at least Mr Muir knows his craft so well that he fools even people he works for, anticipating their suspicions. It's about not leaving someone behind.

Redford is such a stand out actor, he's truly one of a kind. Many reviews mentioned that Redford and Pitt seem to work well together but what a lot of people don't know is that Redford actually hand-picked Brad Pitt and his first feature chatacter was in a Redford film called A River Runs Through It in 1992. Redford is quoted as saying that Pitt reminded him of himself and he had big plans for him. So one would assume they are probably friends, which probably also answers the question someone else had which is why Pitt did not choose to star in the Bourne identity instead of Spy Game - he already had a successful working relationship with Redford. Furthermore Pitt did not need to do the Bourne identity, he had already done Oceans 11 and Ocean's 12 along with a myriad of other incredibly High grossing films, much higher grossing than those that Matt Damon did in a similar time period.

As for people saying that the plot was confusing or poorly written, I disagree on that point as well. Because it has a beginning, it has a middle and it has an ending. The film starts out showing us how Pitt's character gets thrown into prison in a foreign country; the middle part is kind of shown along with the present activities of Muir setting up Tom's rescue while at the same time telling how he and Tom met and worked together in the past. And all this while the audience knows that Muir is planning to rescue Tom but we don't know how until really the final moments of the film, which is the sting more or less. The inserted memories were masterfully done.

For anyone who watches AGT and wonders how those illusionists trick the panel into saying certain numbers and drawing certain pictures, you will learn a lot by watching this film because those psychological mind games of training your audience of what to chose and what to see are very real and they did, in fact, start in the spy arena.

Or is it? Maybe it is easier to ... play it, if you consider it a game? One thing is for sure, Tony Scott is a masterful player ... behind the camera. You can tell with this movie, how he likes to shoot movies and how he likes to create tension, even in a simple scene, where Redford is only holding a cup of coffee and going from one room to another ... insert, camera moves with him, towards him, cut little snippets in and make it seem like something urgent ... masterclass in shooting and editing I'd say.

But that is not all we have here. You also have two wonderful actors ... two people who surely admire each other and play off each other very well. Even if their characters may not agree on many things ... there is some level of respect even in the movie and their playing off each other.

The Spy Game is not something that can be seen lightly ... and something that plays with human life. Where certain scenarios are considered wins, even if a lot has been lost ... you'll know once you see this. I'm surprised I never had seen this before the other day ... but there is only so many movies one can watch, right?