04 Dec 2001

"Spy Game" Trips on Logic: Also, "Behind Enemy Lines"

By Mike Schulz

SPY GAME

Tony Scott's Spy Game opens with one of those enjoyably implausible preludes we're used to seeing in the James Bond series: It's 1991, and American CIA agent Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) is attempting to free a female captive (Catherine McCormack) from a Chinese prison. How will he accomplish this task? Why, by masquerading as a doctor called in to give vaccinations to the inmates, feigning fatal electrocution after touching a wired prison fence - which results in the momentary shut-down of the prison's electrical power, including its surveillance cameras - lying "dead" on a hospital gurney, fleeing the scene when no one's looking, scrambling down ratty corridors in search of the captive, bribing a mentally defunct witness with a piece of gum, and accompanying the prisoner back to the "dead" man's gurney, where prison guards will unknowingly escort the duo to an ambulance and then to freedom. And what trips up the plan? The gum.

08 May 2001

"The Tailor of Panama" Shows Its Seams: Also, "Town & Country"

By Mike Schulz

THE TAILOR OF PANAMA

It's been a very long time since a movie was released in our area that wasn't abjectly stupid, so it's easy to get some initial enjoyment from John Boorman's The Tailor of Panama, an adaptation of John LeCarré's 1996 bestseller. It's partially a spy thriller, but unlike the James Bond installments or the recent smash Spy Kids, the goofiness is kept to a minimum. Beyond that, the plot is smartly established, the cast is promising, the locations are exotic, and director Boorman shows from the start that he's in a frisky, playful mood; this is easily his most lighthearted work since 1987's Hope & Glory. So with all this going for it, and considering the undisputed wretchedness of the year's cinematic output, I have to admit that I feel like an ungrateful jerk for finding The Tailor of Panama itself rather disappointing.

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