Granted, it's tough to get worked up about a thriller in which the CIA's most heinous crime is being annoying and the only thing at stake is Brad Pitt's life, but Spy Game, though incredibly scattershot, is not without its kicks. The top draw is Robert Redford, in fine form as senior operative Nathan Muir, no hoarse whisperer but rather a spry and vital presence. No one will confuse this slick ride with Three Days of the Condor, but it works as a groovy coda to Redford's CIA misadventures.
It's 1991 in Langley, Virginia, and Muir is packing up for his imminent retirement. A journalist friend in Hong Kong tips Muir that his former protégé, Tom Bishop (Pitt), has been imprisoned in Su Chou, where he'll be executed in 24 hours unless Muir exploits several impossible coincidences while issuing glib comments to his uptight, soon-to-be-former colleagues. As he's being grilled about Bishop by his supervisor, Muir selectively and strategically spills his beans.
The adventure begins in Da Nang, circa 1975, where Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way" is posited as the great harmonizer of the Vietnam conflict. During this rockin' but cinematically redundant segment, Muir meets Bishop -- a young sniper from California -- and takes him under his wing, recounting that the lad "starts out trying to find out what he's made of and ends up not liking the view." However, the elder spy soon alters that view, coaching the talented Bishop in the tricks of the trade, from Berlin to Beirut. Thus, a mentorship is born.
Of course, there's nothing like a dubious woman to screw up covert male bonding, so here we get Catherine McCormack as a nurse in Beirut named Elizabeth, for whom Bishop vaguely falls. Coldly British and totally removed from her element, Elizabeth's simultaneous charity work and dalliances with enemy spies confuse and compromise Bishop, and it's she who ultimately lands him in a dank cell in China, having his modelesque mug pummeled. Chicks these days.
Spy Game is a mess, but it's a rousing mess, with ample humor and action to satisfy the discerning dullard within. Peel away the bombast, and Spy Game strives to show us trust, compassion, survival, and especially a long-reigning Hollywood golden boy passing the baton to his successor. In the upcoming Ocean's 11, Pitt struggles in vain to make a clunker seem fun, but here, amid the flash and noise, he seems genuinely touched by the best parts of Redford's legacy. This lends the project a soul, if you're willing to dig for it.