Spy Game

This is a doozy of a spy film, dealing more with the dirty, amoral, back-stabbing real side of espionage than the Bourne or Bond type of action. More of an American John le Carré novel, I would say. And as such, it is insanely complicated. Several times it left me struggling frantically to catch up. It is at its best when demonstrating old-fashioned tradecraft, the kind that doesn’t need Aston-Martins equipped with rocket launchers, but concerns old methods like the dead drop and the delicate art of turning an agent. Where it falters is rather sad, because the best I can say is that I was so concerned with figuring out what Robert Redford was doing to get Brad Pitt out of the Chinese prison, and following the myriad flashbacks and such, that I didn’t have time to really care for any of the characters all that much.