Rating: 

The Info

Directed by: Jon Amiel
Written by: Ronald Bass and Michael Hertzberg, William Broyles Jr.
Starring: Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ving Rhames, Will Patton, Maury Chaykin
Produced by: Sean Connery, Michael Hertzberg, Rhonda Tollefson

The Nutshell

An insurance company agent is chosen to entrap a wealthy professional thief, but who is on whose side?

The Review

    There has been a lot of coverage in the Hollywood press lately about films that glamorize older men, pairing them off with much younger women. Older men like Robert Redford and Harrison Ford have been matched with relative youngsters such as Anne Heche and Kristin Scott Thomas. Entrapment  quite possibly takes the cake for the largest age difference between its romantic leads. Noticing that Sean Connery helped produce this film might explain how he became coupled with the very much younger Catherine Zeta-Jones.

      For films like Entrapment to succeed, they require a certain amount of action. A lack of pulse-pounding chase scenes and gun fights brings the attention span of today's movie audiences down. A good example of a director who understands this is John Frankenheimer and his 1998 film Ronin. Ronin follows the planning out and execution of a crime by a group of criminals-for-hire. In between scenes of planning, getting ready, discussing alternatives etc., we are given several intense car chases, numerous gun battles and a lot of bloodshed. Entrapment spends a majority of its time showing us the planning and interaction of its two main characters, a thief (Connery) and an insurance company agent posing as a thief (Zeta-Jones). We watch the heists go down, yet the motions onscreen are cold and calculated. With only one short-lived car chase and almost no guns at all, Entrapment is almost a bore.

    Connery plays Mac, a renowned thief who has never been caught. An insurance agent, Gin Baker (Zeta-Jones) is chosen to try to entrap Mac, since she has studied his career for a long time. She somehow finds him and starts following him, but he knows it and winds up sneaking into her hotel room to question her. Gin works her charms and Mac takes her on as a partner. They proceed to plan and execute several high-stakes robberies, yet one thing is a mystery: why does Gin never turn him in? Why is it she who keeps coming up with new ideas for robberies? Is Gin actually a thief double-crossing her employers? The occasional appearance of Devereaux (Rhames) a mysterious former partner of Mac's, adds a bit of intrigue to the plot.

     Director Jon Amiel offers fans of his stars what they want. Zeta-Jones picked up a considerable fan base following her wonderful turn in last year's Mask of Zorro. Younger fans will undoubtedly enjoy watching her perform various acrobatic manoeuvres in tight-fitting clothing, while older fans might find her performance a bit wooden. Fans of Sean Connery will be pleased to find him doing what he does best, his James Bond persona. Charming, sarcastic and handsome as always, Connery manages to almost make you forget how much older than Zeta-Jones he is. A forgettable group of supporting characters is headlined by Will Patton as Gin's boss Hector Cruz, while Maury Chaykin is baffling as a buyer of illegal goods in Kuala Lumpur.

    Amiel's direction is capable and intelligent, highlighting the beauty of its stars and nicely bringing what little action there is to life. The score by Christopher Young is basic, while cinematographer Phil Meheux creates an amazing home for Mac on a lakeside hilltop. The plot is full of implausible moments and holes, but the audience that Entrapment is geared towards, mainly male teens and pre-teens, probably won't care. This is a kind of film that is made with audiences in mind, not Academy Awards.

Copyright - Tim Chandler

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