大象传媒

"Do you remember when you could tell the good guys from the bad guys?" asks Robert Redford's old school CIA operative, Nathan Muir, towards the climax of Tony Scott's protracted but enjoyable espionage thriller. It could be a question for the audience as much as anyone, as we root for Redford despite the decidedly grey nature of his character's actions.

On his last day with the agency (natch!), he's called upon to help unravel why his prot茅g茅, Tom Bishop (Pitt), has gone rogue, undertaken an unauthorised mission, and is now stuck in a Chinese clink. The other CIA suits - primarily Stephen Dillane's reptilian bean counter - are inclined to let Bishop rot, but our Bob has different ideas.

Unfolding in a well-balanced mix of flashback - looking at Muir and Bishop's shared history - and 'present day' drama (the film is set in 1991), "Spy Game" zips along at a brisk pace, with Scott pulling off a sniper skirmish in Vietnam with his trademark visual alacrity.

A Berlin-set vignette is also suitably tense, but the action gets bogged down in Beirut, when Catherine McCormack's aid worker/love interest catches Bishop's eye. Questions of conscience are dealt with, but Scott is much happier with Redford's game of cat'n'mouse back at CIA headquarters.

Wittily scripted and wonderfully played by the veteran blond bombshell, Redford's HQ scenes sparkle. But while his morally ambiguous veteran is eminently likable, it's actually hard to care about the fate of Pitt's agent-with-a-heart. The Fight Club star radiates a coldness that would make him perfect for the role of ruthless assassin, but the script lands him with a one-dimensional character whose burgeoning conscience is never adequately explained. Still, much like the film, he's nice to look at.