Director Report Card: Tony Scott (2001)

11. Spy Game

Tony Scott found a good amount of critical and commercial success with “Enemy of the State,” a conspiracy thriller that paired a then-current superstar with a beloved screen icon of the seventies. Scott must've been fond of how that one turned out because he would try almost the exact same formula with his next movie. “Spy Game” comes from the writer team behind humble movies like “Sniper” and “Cutthroat Island.” The film paired Brad Pitt – the modern superstar – with Robert Redford – the established icon – inside a paranoia-infused espionage story. To further remind the viewer of the director's last movie, he would adapt a similar visual design for the movie too. 

The year is 1991. CIA operative Tom Bishop heads into a Chinese prison on a rescue mission. The op goes wrong and Bishop is captured. The U.S. government has twenty-hour hours to arrange an exchange before he is executed for the crime of espionage. The CIA brings in Nathan Muir, Bishop's former mentor and his closest friend. He explains the story of how they met in Vietnam, performed jobs in Berlin, before having a falling out after Bishop lost his girlfriend during a botched mission in Beirut. Muir suspects that the CIA would be just as happy if Bishop died in China and he works behind their backs to rescue him.

Unlike his brother, there aren't too many themes and ideas that reoccur across Tony Scott's various movies. However, if you look at a little closer, there's one story element he returned to a few times. That's the idea of the protagonist with a sometimes contentious relationship with his mentor. You see it in “Top Gun,” between Tom Cruise and Tom Skerritt. It shows up again in “Days of Thunder,” with Robert Duvall in the mentor role, and obviously in “Enemy of the State,” between Smith and Hackman. If you really squint, you can see traces of this idea in “The Hunger” and “Revenge,” with “Crimson Tide” as a subversion of this idea. “Spy Game” is the Tony Scott movie most concerned with this idea so far, focusing squarely on a rookie and the man he looks up to.

You also can't help but look at “Spy Game” as a movie about one generation of cool passing the torch to the next. Robert Redford and Brad Pitt have similar screen personas. They are both genuine, A-list movie stars who are equally respected as sex symbols, box office draws, and actually good actors. The scenes Redford and Pitt share together are the highlights of “Spy Game.” A moment where they are sneaking around a war zone in Beirut, cracking jokes while dodging behind wreckage, seems to recall Redford's most iconic turn in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Moments like this make it entirely clear that Redford recognized Pitt as his most apparent successor for the same breed of cinematic stardom.

Even though the movie is obviously built around Redford and Pitt's chemistry, “Spy Games” separates the two for long stretches of the story. Pitt is captured in China and Redford is working to rescue him in America, while arguing with a boardroom full of gassy, complaining officials. That means “Spy Games” is mostly Redford's movie. He gets to grin, tell jokes, and be a fantastic orator. Pitt, meanwhile, is left to look gorgeous. Whether that's when crouching with a sniper rifle or left bleeding and bandaged under threat of torture. Granted, Pitt has charisma of such a level that even this is not a waste of his talent, as his charm shines through in these scenes. Yet it's still odd that the movie doesn't build more of its structure around the two stars interacting.

Having said that, I do kind of like the way this narrative operates. “Spy Game” almost unfolds like a series of nested stories. We open in 1991, with news of Bishop's capture and Muir in the board room with the CIA decision-makers. He proceeds to tell them about how the two men met, the adventures they had together, and how they eventually had their falling out. The flashback heavy narrative gives us an idea of the history between these guys. By starting in the nineties and stretching back to the Vietnam War, through the Cold War and various conflicts in the Middle East, it also provides a play-by-play of how the enemies of the U.S. shifted – and how they stayed the same – throughout this span of time.

At the same time, “Spy Game” is also a story with a time limit. Bishop's life is on the line and it's a matter of hours. Unless Huir can figure out how to convince the CIA to help his friend, he'll die. In order to let us know how urgent this is, the time and the number of remaining hours until Bishop is executed flash on the screen throughout the film. This story should be a race against time and yet the bulk of its run time is devoted to someone talking about his past. By constantly shifting to events that have already happened, it makes what's going on in the present feel a lot less urgent. It's just an odd miscalculation in the story structure. 

If “Enemy of the State” was a homage to “The Conversation,” “Spy Game” is a homage to “Three Days of the Condor.” Like that film and many other spy movies – including Tony's brother's “Body of Lies” – “Spy Game” is about how expendable agents are to their governments. While in Berlin, Bishop has to sacrifice an innocent man, which Huir repeatedly and dispassionately refers to as an “asset.” He also assures him that he would've done the same thing, if Bishop had been the assets. This enrages Bishop, who refuses to believe that human lives are only tools to use in international games and power plays. While it's nothing we haven't seen before, “Spy Game” does make this conflict compelling. I guess the intrinsic value of human life being questioned is always compelling drama. Pitt and Redford certainly perform nicely in this moment.

Another hallmark of serious spy thrillers like this is that nothing is ever what it seems. Deception is the name of the game and everyone always has their own agenda. All throughout “Spy Game,” you're waiting for the reveal. You can assume that a lot of what we're seeing is a misdirect of some sort. Furthermore, it's easy enough to guess that Huir's character arc will have his apparent coldness towards human life being revised. Even though it's easy enough to guess where all of this is going, watching “Spy Games” unfold is satisfying enough. The pieces slowly fall into place and reveal the truth in a way that's predictable but entertaining. If nothing else, the movie is efficient, making sure all its various subplots build towards the ending.

That includes the movie's love story. While posing as a photojournalist in Beirut, and trying to convince a doctor to help assassinate a local Shah who is funding terrorism, Bishop becomes close to a relief worker named Elizabeth Hadley. Hadley, played by Catherine McCormack, falls into bed with Bishop. The film seems to intentionally keeps itself guarded around this romance. The scenes of Pitt and McCormack being romantic, which certainly seem effective enough, are limited. It's an odd choice, as the dissolution of their relationship is the reason Bishop and Huir have their falling out. You'd think the film would want to focus more on that. But I guess someone figured the relationship between the men was more important.

With “The Fan,” Tony Scott's already stylized direction started to grow more hyperkinetic. In “Enemy of the State,” we watched it grow even more frantic, with grittier camera movement, more helicopter shots of the city swinging by, and editing that was even faster. In “Spy Game,” Scott pushes this even further. There's yet more helicopter shots, including an extended sequence of Pitt and Redford talking on a rooftop. The movie does this annoying thing a few times, where the footage speeds up while panning to one side before immediately returning to normal. Scott also makes sure to include some black-and-white footage and on-screen text, usually in the form of the time or location. While some of those touches aren't the worst, it does start to get grating after a little while. These visual techniques don't seem to serve the story in any way. 

Yet, when you get down to it, Tony Scott still knows how to engineer an effective action scene. There's not a lot of explosions or chaos in “Spy Game.” But when it comes, you notice it. A sequence devoted to an unexpected shoot-out in Beirut is a highlight of the movie. Bullets fly through the air, glass shatters, and blood explodes suddenly against windshields. It all climaxes with a massive explosion. Interestingly, Scott makes sure to focus on the aftermath of this violence, showing the burnt-out ruins and bodies with missing limbs being laid on the ground. Not only does this make “Spy Game” grittier than the director's more light-hearted action films but it also works for the film, by showing the differences between Bishop and Huir's opinion towards human life. 

“Spy Game” would come out in November of 2001, not long after the September 11th terrorist attacks in America changed the planet forever. One assumes that this was not exactly the kind of escapist entertainment Americans were hungry for right in the wake of such an event. This is presumably why the movie only made 62 million at the domestic box office, far short of its 112 million budget. Worldwide ticket sales brought its gross to 143 million, so it wasn't a total wash for 20th Century Fox. Nevertheless, “Spy Game” remains one of Tony Scott's more forgotten films. It's not a bad flick, doing what it needs to and distracting the audience with some decent performances and one or two fun, if predictable, twists. It's worth it, if for no other reason than to see Redford and Pitt light up the screen briefly. [Grade: B-]