Spy Game is a film that appears to have a lot going for it. First and foremost, the cast is stellar. Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Stephen Dillane, and David Hemmings, for a start. I've been a huge fan of Redford ever since he played the Sundance Kid. Hemmings, sadly, died in 2003, just a couple of years after this film was released. He was a great loss. I remember watching him in Blow Up at a school film night, and although perhaps his career didn't result in quite the superstardom one might have expected, he was never less than watchable, whatever role he played.
The film begins quite promisingly. After a dramatic action scene in China, Pitt's character, Tom Bishop, is arrested. We learn that he's going to be executed in 24 hours. Back in CIA HQ, Tom's old mentor, Nathan Muir (Redford) is on his last day at work prior to retirement. He's called in to deal with the situation, or so it seems. But why are his bosses so reluctant to take decisive action to rescue Bishop?
A race against time is on the cards. But then, something strange - at least to my mind - happens. The story gets bogged down in a sequence of extensive flashbacks, charting the progress of the relationship between Muir and Bishop. It's almost watching like a portmanteau movie, with some - it has to be said - not very exciting office scenes in between each action segment.
I'm afraid this method of storytelling didn't work for me in what was supposed to be an action movie. The stop-start approach might be perfectly suitable for some kinds of stories, but not this one. It became difficult for me to get interested in the characters or their fate. I've read some reviews (and to be fair, the reviews are on the whole relatively positive) that compare this film to Three Days of the Condor, but that is a genuinely exciting film and, to my mind, far superior to this one. Great cast, pity about the structure of the script.
Excellent assessment of a film that could have been so much better. Thank you. Stephen Dillane has always been one of my favourite actors, and is one of those utterly reliable performers who has been in everything, yet few people know his name but recognise him on the typical British character actor level as "Oh! So that's him!" Among other things he starred in The TV series The Tunnel (the remake of Scandi thriller The Bridge) Game Of Thrones, The Crown as artist Graham Sutherland and the bemused detective in Irish Kevin Spacey bio based film Ordinary Decent Criminal. David Hemming's career never quite achieved the early promise, but he was Ricky Tarr in Alec Guinness's Smiley TV series, and one of his last performances was in the film of Graham Swift's Last Orders, whereby a great team of terrific British character actors go on a road trip to scatter the ashes of Michael Caine's East End butcher. Not crime, but witty and heartwarming, and sadly probably forgotten now.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Liz. I've never watched Ordinary Decent Criminal and should add it to the list! Same goes for Last Orders.
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