(rated R, 125 mins.)
There was a time when CIA officer Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) and his protégé Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) were inseparable, traveling the world and tasting everything it had to offer. Now, on the brink of his retirement from the agency, Muir learns that Bishop has gone rogue. This forces him to confront what he should do next in the ultimate spy game. Told in flashback form, Bishop is held hostage in China for espionage as the film follows the two men’s conflicted relationship from Berlin to Beirut. The story works because it’s the study of how the guy (Redford) sacrificed the small picture for the big picture. There is much sympathy for the handsome, soft spoken, Redford who holds the movie with this you’ve-got-to-be-kidding feeling since he was up for retirement the very next day. Pitt’s angle is the dealing of America’s foreign policy during and after the cold war. In a time when America’s number one position is being threatened in real life, the movie parallels how we’ve maybe held that position for a little too long. This is Pitt’s first reunion with Redford since 1992 when he directed him in “A River Runs Through It”.
