SPY GAME (2001) *** Thriller in which CIA agent Robert Redford has to save CIA agent Brad Pitt from execution by the Chinese, all the while battling their employer. Two of the great heroic actors in the history of cinema team up in a film with an intelligent plot, insider information, plenty to say, and great shots from Tony Scott (Berlin, London, Hong Kong, Casablanca as Beirut). Interesting but, appropriately enough, not nearly as interesting as what's going on beneath the surface. Redford became something of a liberal icon through his activism, and films such as All the President's Men (no, Redford didn't really break Watergate), The Candidate (no, Redford wasn't really ever a candidate who arched his back against the establishment and stood up for his ideals), and Three Days of the Condor (no, Redford wasn't really the one who blew the whistle on CIA criminality). This period of Redford's life culminated in 1984 when he joined Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, and Clayton Trapp in active support of the presidential candidacy of Gary Hart, a campaign that ultimately so threatened the American power structure that the rules of the game (de jure and de facto) were entirely changed. The years wore on and in 2000 Redford somehow found himself, on recorded messages, calling millions of undecided voters and urging them to believe that Al Gore was a great environmentalist of presidential timbre. Redford's credibility, with the environmental movement in particular and the American left intelligentsia in general, was effectively totaled, and Gore lost the election anyway. Redford no doubt didn't enjoy life as a sell-out who'd failed, and so this film represents an effort to crawl back onto his pedestal. The problem was that the people who could put him there weren't interested in a word he had to say (think Clare Short after Iraq, my British friends). So Redford needed to trade on someone else's credibility, and few actors anywhere have more credibility than Brad Pitt. They're on good terms, and not incidentally Redford is responsible for much of Pitt's credibility. Before Redford directed A River Runs Through It Pitt was generally considered Hollywood's latest 15-minute pretty boy. That film is when Brad Pitt became Brad Pitt. So here comes Brad, high priest of rehabilitation and holding a resumé so astounding that he doesn't even have room for such a thing. But make no mistake about it, this baby is Redford's to win or lose with. Anyone could have played the Pitt role. Not as well perhaps, but it's truely peripheral: most of the time he lies around having been tortured. Redford gets all the big lines, all the mysterious strategems, all of the torment of whether to go to the Bahamas or save a friend. On an artistic level Redford unquestionably pulls it off. It's not his greatest film, but it's an impressive return to form. Enough to remind you that he invented the Sundance Film Festival, which is where corporate funds are given to real film-makers instead of studio yes-men. That's a good thing, and it probably couldn't have been done if Redford hadn't courted influence in the corporate sphere, amongst people whose perception of politics is so limited that many of them honestly perceived Al Gore as a staunch environmentalist of presidential timbre. Sundance is a mini-revolution within the film industry, and a good one. Enough, what's the bottom line, isn't that how we've come to evaluate hoplessly complex situations? The bottom line is that Redford appears determined to regain lost cachet, and is willing to apologize even if he's not sure what for. Unfortunately he also appears to have little more sense of political right and wrong than his character does in assisting the Chinese in arresting Pitt's girlfriend (I'm saying that rationalizations, manipulation and compromise come too easily). In the film events force his hand, reverberating through a head so learned that little could come as an epiphany. He's been in some interesting rooms, it would be nice if his real life story took a turn along similar lines.
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