Spy Game

An amazing old-school gem that beautifully recreates the late 80s-early 90s with a fantastic Robert Redford, a few creative script tricks, and numerous fabulous dialogues and situations. The thing to appreciate about this film is that Tony Scott put everything here. It is truly a "Game", nothing more, nothing less. Tremendously entertaining and attractive. (04/17/2013)

Robert Redford sits down in his office at the beginning and, reminiscing about the espionage adventures he experienced with his partner Brad Pitt, doesn’t get up again for the rest of the film. With its sophisticated main characters and without a proper amount of action, Spy Game is a mosaic of flashbacks that thinks it’s enough to have an intelligently written screenplay to be appealing. And that’s a mistake. Drawing so much of the viewer’s attention to an overwrought 130-minute screenplay that doesn’t in any way really reward me… That’s a game I’m not willing to play. (05/22/2002)

This is a film with sober ratings and average reviews, but for me, it is Tony Scott's best film and one of those rare cases of action-packed spy drama that I can really appreciate. It's quite typical that this film has much lower ratings than a series of absurdly exaggerated action-packed films. Of course, the screenplay has its flaws here and there, which is why I am not giving it a five-star rating, but Robert Redford is excellent, the film maintains tension practically throughout, with dynamic editing that has nothing to do with choppiness, and especially the parts set in Beirut are precise in terms of action. Overall impression: 85%. (04/17/2009)

Tony Scott's bravura spy thriller, whose predatory and dynamic pacing precisely matches the shakily unpredictable world of the clandestine services. The stunning narrative style, which maps out previous important missions alongside the current storyline and gradually fleshes out a complete picture of the close relationship between two key agents, is almost perfect under Scott's direction. The execution itself and especially the use of camera filters, including all the other visual flourishes, is very reminiscent of the best of the 90s, which warms the heart twice over. [85%] (02/07/2022)

"Why would I ask somebody else to kill a horse that belonged to me?" On his last day before retirement, a case officer turns Langley upside down and acts on the very emotions he always warned his recruits against. It doesn’t matter that after a series of lies, blatant abuse of power, forgery of documents, and sending SEAL teams into action based on false orders, he has not only lost his pension fund for a comfortable retirement in warm countries but may not see a cent of his retirement savings. Well, at least he has his Porsche, right? Unless it goes up for auction to cover damages. The average shot length of 2.7 seconds is just right to avoid crossing into epileptically unbearable Scott territory, but the seasoned veteran Redford deserved a more convincing script for his One Day of the Condor. (12/20/2022)