Review of Entrapment Written by: Ronald Bass and Michael Hertzberg Directed by: Jon Amiel Rating: * out of ****
I have no real tangible proof of this, but I swear that there are a lot of producers in Hollywood who adamantly believe that if you take a bad script, written by a bad writer and give the project it to an equally bad director, then it is actually possible to make a good movie. Using their logic, all that really needs be done to change the bad movie into a good movie is cast a bunch of super-famous actors and provide an almost unlimited production budget.
This is the only way I can fathom how 20th Century Fox hired Jon Amiel in order to direct this eighty million dollar waste of my time (not counting the time it took me to get to and from the theatre). Now, before I continue to ferociously attack what's wrong with this film, I just want to point out that one of the reasons it fails so miserably is because it does have the potential to be an exciting thriller. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Virginia Baker, an insurance investigator tracking down an infamous art thief named Robert MacDougal (Sean Connery). If you've ever seen any Hollywood blockbuster before, I really don't have to spend too much time on frivolous plot details: the two team up for various jobs, stealing various things for various purposes.
The problem we come to is that we've all seen this a few billion times before and this film doesn't break any new ground in the big-budget/Hollywood/action genre. The result is that the entire production feels contrived. I'm going to be completely honest here: pretty much the only thing keeping me awake throughout the run-time was looking at Catherine Zeta-Jones. Now while this may be a compliment for Ms. Zeta-Jones, it certainly isn't for either the writers or the director, who are not nearly as clever as they think they are. Just about the most profound thought they can inject into this film is when they have MacDougal lecture Baker on the semantic difference between "entrapment" and "blackmail".
With an eighty million dollar budget, you'd think that Entrapment would at least feature edge-of-your seat action scenes or breathtaking special F/X. Well, you'd be wrong. The action that is present in this film takes place in a huge skyscraper and is relatively unspectacular. Unfortunately for all those involved with Entrapment, Die Hard narrowly beat it to the screen by… 11 years. The reality is that after 15 minutes of watching this picture, you know exactly what's going to happen, despite rather pathetic attempts in the screenplay to throw in plot twists.
Many scenes seem to exist merely as a reason to outfit Zeta-Jones in extremely tight-fitting clothing. One particular scene features Baker crawling around trying to avoid laser-beams while she tries to steal an ancient Chinese mask. Nothing wrong with that, but she entered the room from the floor and knew exactly where the mask was - so why didn't she and MacDougal tunnel in directly under the mask instead of the other side of the room? I'll tell you why: because it's a great excuse to photograph Zeta-Jones' posterior as it slides underneath those beams (and it also allows a second scene of the exact same thing - the rehearsal).
Ving Rhames also makes an appearance in this movie, and though he has great screen presence (although so do Connery and Zeta-Jones) and the most interesting character in the film, not even he can rescue this film from the depths of the Boring Film Abyss (a concept I invented just to describe this picture).
One last complaint: Entrapment is littered of instances where MacDougal will just slip into a shadow or behind a building, or he becomes obstructed by a moving vehicle and then in the next shot, he'll spontaneously disappear in ninja-like fashion. I can picture Amiel patting himself on the back, thinking to himself "It'll leave the audience wondering for days: How did he do that?" We know Jon, it's called editing.
Reviewed by A. Estey Copyright 1999, by A. Estey (gbv_adam@hotmail.com)
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