HOLLYWOOD - The reunion of Brad Pitt and Robert Redford in Spy Game is being welcomed by most critics, but none are giving it a top rating.
"Enjoy it
for what it is," writes Newsweek's David Ansen, "a fleet,
handsome fantasy of globe-hopping blond demigods."
A.O. Scott says that
director Tony Scott (presumably no relation) employs many of the
conventions he used in Top Gun, Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State
. They are, he writes, "like gadgets in the Sharper Image
catalog: sleek, expensive handsome gizmos of doubtful utility."
Kenneth
Turan in the Los Angeles Times uses a different analogy. "What
Spy Game turns out to be," he writes, "is the old reliable family
car spruced up around the edges in an attempt to convince a new
generation of buyers that it's a hot number."
Yet another analogy comes
from Rita Kempley in the Washington Post, who gives the film one
of its best notices: "The movie is sleek and shiny as a new bullet,
reflecting Scott's patented surplus of style, but in this case that only
enhances a stirring drama about the moral ambiguities native to
intelligence-gathering."