Spy Game

2001 "It's not how you play the game. It's how the game plays you."
7.1| 2h6m| R| en| More Info
Released: 18 November 2001 Released
Producted By: Universal Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

On the day of his retirement, a veteran CIA agent learns that his former protégé has been arrested in China, is sentenced to die the next morning in Beijing, and that the CIA is considering letting that happen to avoid an international scandal.

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Reviews

GazerRise Fantastic!
Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.
Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.
Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Sourav Kumar This is the kind of movie if liked than can be watched hundred of times without any hesitation. A Tony Scott picture is always worth watching. I really loved this film even though it's entirely fiction but it is worth catching upon for many many times. The leads Brad Pitt,Robert Redford and others really made sure to make the audience stick to the movie with their extraordinary acting. If someone didn't like the movie then he/she should never watch this type of genres ever. The leads did their work so well that maybe someone somewhere must be playing the character of Nathan Muir or Tom Bishop.
SnoopyStyle In 1991, CIA agent Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) is captured trying to help Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormack) escape Chinese PLA Su Chou prison. Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) on his last day before retirement tries to navigate the politically sensitive situation. He recruited sniper Bishop back in '75 Vietnam for a mission.Director Tony Scott is making a slick espionage movie with two of the greatest stars in the universe. This should be better but it's only passable. Scott is pulling out all the editing tricks to artificially juice up the excitement. I'm not sure it fits the material but it's perfectly watchable. It wants to be an action movie when it's more of a tense chess game.
nzpedals Part of the story is set in the present as senior CIA people respond to the capture and impending execution of an agent, Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt), who has been caught trying to rescue someone from a Chinese prison, but who, and why? They want to get the personal files of Bishop from Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) who has been Bishop's controller. There is a flashback as Muir tells of meeting Bishop in Vietnam, where Bishop is a sniper, and another when Bishop is recruited when in Berlin.We see the mentor/student relationship develop, we see aspects of both their personalities and also that of the whole CIA culture.When Muir learns that Bishop is at Su Chou prison, he realises who Bishop was trying to rescue and why. There is another flashback to tell about Bishop's meeting with Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormack), and what follows.Hadley is an aid worker at a refugee camp in Beirut where Muir and Bishop have come to assassinate a terrorist commander. Bishop very quickly moves into Hadley's apartment. There is no explicit bed-wrestling, just a couple of early-morning scenes. This low-key approach by the writers makes a much stronger impression. We can see they are deeply committed.But Muir knows about Hadley's background and regards her as a threat both to Bishop and all the CIA's operations, so he organises her abduction and rendition to China.Six years go by. When Bishop is in Hong Kong, he hears about a white woman in a nearby prison and realises it must be his love, hence the rescue attempt, which very nearly succeeds.When Muir hears that the "company" will not even try to negotiate for the release of Bishop, he forges the Director's signature to authorise a "Plan B" that Bishop had prepared, and he uses his life's savings to bribe a power company manager to turn off the lights for thirty minutes. Plan "B" proceeds and succeeds, and Muir can retire happily.Redford and Pitt and McCormack play their parts superbly. They really become the characters. There are some great scenes, with great dialogue. The writers have done a great job, with some neat philosophical gems by Muir. Other actors are also great, Stephen Dillane, Marianne Jean-Baptiste especially.Only rated an 8, mainly because the movie really needs to be seen two or three times to pick up the connections between some incidents.
simondclinch-1 Frankly, the 7.0 average rating is a gross annoyance, because 7.1 is the minimum for IMDb to classify it as "liked". So I only just got around to seeing it and only because I couldn't find anything I hadn't seen in the genre with a higher rating.Fact is that this is one of the best spy films I have seen. It keeps your attention from the get-go. Well worth seeing.Also it has a rich mix of intrigue, action, politics, spy-technicality, you name it!Could it be that the genre as a whole is just too complicated for the average reviewer? Possibly looking at some of the other ratings for top spy films!