The first 30 minutes are striking: we are immediately thrown into an endless game made of said and unsaid things, coded phone calls, files containing mysterious information, and at the same time we follow the story of the other protagonist, involved in a daring mission. That’s what I think: “After all, maybe Tony Scott is not just Ridley’s (Blade Runner, Alien, Thelma & Louise, The Duellists, The Gladiator) stupid brother, as everyone has always thought”. This is partly true. Tony is the “commercial” soul of the two (he has not done any masterpiece yet, while his brother has), even if Ridley has done some poor works too (G.I. Jane, 1492 The Conquest of Paradise, Hannibal); yet, in time Tony is proving to be a very intuitive director as far as box-office success is concerned (Top Gun, The last boy scout, Enemy of the State, True Romance). This movie proves it once again: it is a good work, with excellent highs and with lows, the latter unfortunately due to a script which does not always draws the audience’s attention, and this is unforgivable in a spy movie. But if you want to see a movie which is not too banal, with Robert Redford on top form and a “sufficient” Brad Pitt who would not want to look like a fashion model (even though he seems to say: “Hey look at me, I’m cool, but I can still play the part of a spy in Beirut, can’t I?”), and a spy-story which is not too bad after all, well hurry up to the cinema then! Maybe it is better if you go to the first night show though, or your digestion could play a funny trick on you, like a nap…

TO KEEP: Robert Redford was the protagonist of one of the most beautiful spy-movies ever: maybe Spy Game is not the same as "Three days of the condor", but it is always good to see him playing parts like these instead of soppy parts like "The horse whisperer" or "Indecent Proposal"...

TO THROW AWAY: women in spy stories always cause troubles: here they are guilty of slowing down the dramatic scene during one of the many flashbacks. Sorry, but spy-movies are for tough guys…

MERIT: having put together two generations of blond and famous actors, even if Redford had already directed Pitt in “A river runs through it”, which I consider a useless and pretentious movie (and please don’t tell me, as a friend of mine did, “the photography is really well done”, or I will buy you a postcard of a landscape).

DEMERIT: please… no one uses sepia and lightened colours anymore… It looks like a wedding video…

(www.centraldocinema.it)