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>> Spy Game squanders Redford and Pitt

by MATTHEW HAYS

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Put two of Hollywood's hottest commodities, the resilient icon Robert Redford and newer-hottie-on-the-block Brad Pitt together in a spy movie. Protégé Pitt is in trouble, and Redford, on his final day on the job before retiring at the CIA, must try to save him.

What a combo! Sort of like thinking of De Niro and Brando together. Or Pitt and Julia Roberts. Or Madonna and Britney Spears even. (Okay, maybe that last one was pushing it.) But like De Niro and Brando in The Score or Pitt and Roberts in The Mexican, Spy Game feels less like a satisfying collision and collusion of talent than a lost opportunity.

There are some tense moments of suspense, in particular the opening sequence, which has Pitt masterminding his way out of a Chinese prison with an inmate he's attempting to rescue, but the rest of the film loses its way. Much of Spy Game is made up of a series of flashbacks, told from Redford's perspective, about how he recruited Pitt and helped to make him the spy that he is. (The film leaps back and forth in time from the Vietnam War to the end of the Cold War--indeed, we are supposed to buy that Redford hasn't aged one bit in that entire period.) But instead of insights into their bond, we get an impressive travelogue (settings include Beirut and Berlin) and a couple of one-liners. An underdeveloped relationship, for sure. It all looks very nice, and there are some unusual camera angles. But really, shouldn't a good movie--even a no-brainer action movie--be more than this?

The principal culprit seems to be director Tony Scott, who made the feisty, admirable True Romance but has since floundered. Scott is fixated on surfaces, from the rough edges of a war-torn Middle East to the craters on Redford's face to the scruffy ends of Pitt's hair. The actors shot scenes on impressive locations, all over the globe. Too bad the movie itself doesn't go anywhere. So much star power, it seems, and so little place to go. :

Spy Game opens Friday, Nov. 23