Spy Game

CIA veteran Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) learns that his protégé Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) has “gone rogue” and been arrested in China, to be executed in 24 hours. Muir’s superiors have decided to cut Bishop adrift and are keeping Muir under wraps, but there are some tricks in the old fox yet. The script manages somehow to be both tantalizingly complicated and comfortably predictable, with good interplay between Redford (the old pro) and Pitt (the young Turk). But director Tony Scott should have studied John Boorman’s The Tailor of Panama to see how this kind of film is done.