Spy Game

Spy Game is a well-oiled spy thriller with Robert Redford as the somewhat cynical CIA agent Nathan Muir and Brad Pitt as his idealistic pupil Tom Bishop, who cannot set human feelings aside in the same way as his mentor.

Nathan has always taught his protégé that a spy must ultimately think only of his own welfare, but the question is whether he can live up to his own precept when Tom is imprisoned in China and sentenced to death. Nathan has 24 hours to save Tom's skin. It is a short deadline, for Nathan's superiors do not seem particularly inclined to help the agent, who has been working on his own to free the civil rights activist Elizabeth. Better to sacrifice an employee than risk relations between the USA and China becoming more strained.

In his usual masterly style, Tony Scott handles the many leaps in time and place. The many flashbacks shed light on the friendship between Nathan and his apprentice, though one never really gets close to them. When Spy Game shows the pair at work in the field, for example in the former East Germany, a less flattering side of the CIA emerges. It is remarkable for a Hollywood film that not even the ageing hero Nathan Muir is morally unimpeachable.