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.”
