Themes: Race Against Time, Traitorous Spies/Double Agents, Behind the Iron Curtain
Main Cast: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane, Larry Bryggman
Release Year: 2001
Country: US
Run Time: 127 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Brad Pitt is reunited as a co-star with his A River Runs Through It (1992) director Robert Redford for this espionage thriller from Tony Scott. On the verge of retirement from the Central Intelligence Agency, veteran spy Nathan Muir (Redford) learns that his one-time protégé Tom Bishop (Pitt) has gone rogue and been taken prisoner after attempting to smuggle a prisoner out of China. Although Muir and Bishop had once been close friends, sharing adventures from Vietnam to Berlin, bad blood and resentment developed between them, and the two men haven't seen each other in years. As his memories of their friendship come flooding back, Muir sets about arranging the rescue of his old friend from a Communist jail. Spy Game (2001) co-stars Catherine McCormack as a human rights activist and Bishop's love interest. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Review
Ignoring its somewhat dubious politics, Tony Scott's espionage thriller remains a taut and engrossing -- if glossily shallow -- take on international intrigue, shoved along at a steady clip by brisk editing and an insistent score. This is the kind of material a director like Alan J. Pakula would have thrived on in the '70s; Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata's script is rife with double- and triple-crosses, sex, assassinations, elaborate flashbacks, daring rescues, and beat-the-clock political maneuvering. In the hands of Pakula or a similarly accomplished director, Spy Game would have been truly epic instead of endlessly watchable, but, as it is, the movie offers more than enough coherent drama for audiences to chew over. Though Scott's excessive stylistic flourishes are mostly distracting, he's to be commended for delineating a head-spinning amount of information in a relatively compact, 127-minute running time. Granted, some characters fall by the wayside -- the luminous Charlotte Rampling has a nothing part -- and some plot details remain unclear, but through it all, Robert Redford anchors the film with a relaxed cool he hasn't exhibited in years. It's a part tailor-made for him, and his mere presence lends the film a gravity it wouldn't have had otherwise. Scott seems mostly uninterested in his characters' emotional transformations, but the veteran leading man more than makes up for it in his repartee with a similarly well-cast Brad Pitt. So while it's tantalizing to think of the movie Spy Game could have been, the one that's onscreen proves to be more than enough. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Garry Freeman - Art Director, Andrew Nicholson - Art Director, Stephen Dobric - Art Director, John Hill - Art Director, Kevin Phipps - Supervising Art Director, Bonnie Timmermann - Casting, Louise Frogley - Costume Designer, John Wildermuth - First Assistant Director, Tony Scott - Director, Christian Wagner - Editor, Armyan Bernstein - Executive Producer, Iain Smith - Executive Producer, James W. Skotchdopole - Executive Producer, Thomas A. Bliss - Executive Producer, Harry Gregson-Williams - Composer (Music Score), G. Marq Roswell - Musical Direction/Supervision, Nina Ruscio - Production Designer, Chris Seagers - Production Designer, Norris Spencer - Production Designer, Dan Mindel - Cinematographer, Marc Abraham - Producer, Doug Wick - Producer, Jille Azis - Set Designer, Simon Kaye - Sound/Sound Designer, Steve Dent - Stunts Coordinator, Michael Frost Beckner - Screen Story, Michael Frost Beckner - Screenwriter, David Arata - Screenwriter
Set in 1991, the film depicts the U.S. and Chinese Governments on the verge of a major trade agreement with the American President due to pay a visit to China to seal the deal. When the Central Intelligence Agency gets word that their operative Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) has been captured trying to free an Englishwoman, Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormack), from a Chinese prison near Su Chou (Suzhou), and is being questioned under torture and will be executed within twenty-four hours unless he is claimed by the U.S. Government, they scramble to decide what to do. Lacking the courage to save their agent's life, they say that if they claim Bishop as an agent, they risk destroying the trade agreement. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that Bishop was operating in a "rogue" capacity without permission from the Agency.
In an attempt to quickly deal with the situation, CIA executives call in Nathan David Muir (Robert Redford), an aging mid-level case officer on his last day before retirement, and the man who recruited Bishop. Although they tell Muir that they simply need him to act as a "stop gap" to fill in some holes in their background files, the officials are in reality hoping that what he gives them is the smoking gun they need to justify letting Bishop die. Realizing as much, Muir attempts to save Bishop by leaking the story to CNN through a contact in Hong Kong, believing that the CIA will rescue Tom once a public outcry puts pressure on them to do so. Unfortunately for Muir, the tactic only stalls them, as a phone call to the FCC from a high ranking executive results in CNN retracting the story.
During the debriefing, referred above, Muir describes how he met Bishop in Vietnam and how he recruited Bishop in Berlin in 1975 and continued to work together there. Both sub-plots are given extensive time in the film. Considerable time is also devoted to Muir and Bishop's spy work in Lebanon.
With his plan quashed, Muir resorts to far more dangerous tactics, secretly creating a forged urgent operational directive from the CIA Director to commence Operation Dinner Out: a daring rescue mission spearheaded by U.S. Navy SEALs. Using US$ 282,000 (all of his life savings) and a misappropriated file on Chinese coastline satellite imagery, Muir bribes a Chinese energy official to cut power to the prison for thirty minutes, during which time the SEAL rescue team retrieves Bishop and Hadley.
Hadley, who fled the UK after carrying out a bombing of the Chinese Embassy, met Bishop in Lebanon. She was in the Chinese prison after being kidnapped and exchanged for an arrested US diplomat. It was in fact Muir himself who had arranged the kidnapping, believing she could possibly expose Bishop's true identity as a CIA operative. After realizing that Hadley was the target of Bishop's daring rescue attempt, Muir finally learns that he greatly underestimated Bishop's feelings for her. It is this guilt which prompts him to part with his life savings in order to save her and Bishop, going against his warning to Bishop years previously in Berlin that he would not go after him if he went "off the reservation."
Bishop, who is rescued at the end of the film nearly 15 minutes prior to his scheduled execution, realizes Muir was behind his rescue since the name of the plan to rescue him, "Operation Dinner Out", was a reference to a birthday gift that Bishop gave Muir while they were in Lebanon.
The ending credits dedicate the film to the memory of Elizabeth Jean Scott, the director Tony Scott's mother, who died in 2001.[2]
Budapest, Hungary served as Cold WarBerlin in the film. The movie was shot there to save money, and also because Berlin has changed a lot since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The helicopter landing in the film's climax was filmed at an airfield near Budapest.
Oxford, England: the former Oxford Prison, which closed in 1996, was used as the Chinese prison set in Su Chou (Suzhou). (It has since been converted into a luxury hotel.) Shots of the ambulance approaching the prison were also filmed in Queen's Lane in Oxford.
The GlaxoSmithKline research centre in Stevenage, England was used for exterior and some interior scenes at the CIA headquarters. (Aerial shots of the real headquarters were also included.)
The CIA lobby location was in the Senate House of the University of London. Close-ups of Robert Redford as Muir driving from his home to the CIA headquarters were filmed in Regent's Park, standing in for Washington, D.C..
A second unit filmed footage in Washington, D.C. and Virginia for the scenes of Muir driving to and from the CIA headquarters.
