Tony Scott's Spy Game (2001) opens with a fast-paced action sequence that assault's the viewer's gaze. Tom Bishop (Bradd Pitt) is a Central Intelligence Agency agent gone rogue, who is captured while infiltrating a Chinese prison to rescue an imprisoned foreigner. Bishop's arrest imperils trade negotiations between the United States and China. He is interrogated and will be executed as a spy at 7 AM the next morning. Fellow agent Harry Duncan (David Hemmings) tips off Bishop's former mentor Nathan Muir (Robert Redford), just before Muir is summoned on his last day by Charles Harker (Stephen Dillane) and Troy Folger (Larry Bryggman) to face an internal investigation regarding Bishop’s intelligence career. Time is running out and The Company want some answers.

PowerShift

Having established the film's premise through strong pacing and tight plotting, script-writers Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata then proceed to explore several themes--the mentor/protégé relationship, rhe corporatization of intelligence agencies, the shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics and geosecurity, and the radical discontinuities of a post-cold-war environment--over the next two hours. Scott and editor Christian Wagner infuse the film with the fragmented editing style and glorification of technology that defined Enemy of the State (1998). By reuniting Pitt and Redford, the stars of A River Runs Through It (1992), Spy Game sacrifices narrative complexity for character performances. The film hints at key geopolitical issues that will define the 21st century without examining them in-depth.

The Zen of Scripting Flash-Points and Hot-Spots

Michael Frost Beckner's script embodies several of the script-writing paradigms that have become the norm in MBA-run Hollywood studios. The film's story is told largely in flashback as Muir recounts his exploits with Bishop (nicknamed "Boy Scout" by Company insiders) to the investigative taskforce (late 1991). The story arc shifts from Bishop's recruitment by Muir in Vietnam (1975), through his training and an early operation in West and East Berlin (1976) to the growing enmity in Beirut between mentor and protégé over their methods (1985). The timing for Bishop's execution by the Chinese gives the story a twenty-four hour deadline, enabling Scott to freeze-frame the film to remind the viewer.

Beckner's positioning of the film's characters reveals his reliance on melodramatic structures. Harker and Folger act as would-be Grand Inquisitors, willing to trade Bishop's life for hyper-real geostrategic games and "plausible deniability." Muir's secretary Gladys Jennip (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Dr. Byars (Matthew Marsh) either assist Muir's own counter-investigation or prompt back-story revelations. Finally, Beirut aid worker Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormack), exiled from England for bombing a Chinese facility and killing the Premier's son, is Muir's "asset" who becomes Bishop's love-interest.

The film's story easily fits into script-writing paradigms proposed by Syd Field (three-act structure and plot points) and Christopher Vogler (a twelve-phase initiatory structure influenced by Joseph Campbell's mythopoeic anthropology). The Vietnam sequence, where a patriotic Bishop is sent to assassinate Viet Cong General Hun Chea (Eddie Yoh) is Vogler's "call to initiation" with Muir's West Berlin recruitment and training as "crossing the threshold." The bungled China operation and Muir's tip-off by Duncan compresses Field's five-page opening set-up. The first act encompasses this set-up and the Vietnam operation, with the act's turning point being Bishop's successful and deployment in West and East Berlin to smuggle Schmidt (Joerg Stadler) across the Berlin Wall. The second act encompasses most of this sequence, a revelatory confrontation between Bishop and Muir about the realities of cloak-and-dagger work, and the team's mission in Beirut to assassinate Sheikh Salameh (Nabil Massad). The mission ends with the team splitting after a suicide driver (Raid Regragui) slams into a building (in the film's most pyrotechnic sequence) and Hadley suddenly disappears. This segues into the film's third act, where Muir discovers what the investigative team have been hiding from him, and launches his own covert operation, with help from Duncan and Commander Wiley (Dale Dye), to save Bishop's life. The denouement--covering the rescue operation, Hadley's fate and Muir's checkmate of the briefing--closes the film in a tight four-minute sequence.

The story is filled with character and plot reversals, a trade-mark of Hollywood's script paradigms. Muir 'turns up' in West Berlin to recruit Bishop through a series of psychological exercises (learning "tradecraft") that become comic (eliciting information from strangers, negotiating his way onto a balcony in five minutes). Bishop's mission to smuggle Schmidt into West Berlin is revealed as a diversion gambit for Muir's attempt to 'out' defector Anna Cathcart (Charlotte Rampling). The film's theme is summarized in a subsequent argument between Bishop and Muir, using base-ball analogies, over tactics and moral differences. Many of these reversals 'play' on personal motivations (why did Hadley 'betray' Bishop?) for dramatic effect, without creating great character depth. Wise-cracking dialogue and personality clusters are substitutes for truly character-driven plotting (usually more chaotic and unexpected).

Redford's role, for example, is evoked by his exchanges with the investigative taskforce and his problems within The Company (gaining a secure line to discuss classified information or getting past security check-points). Just as Gene Hackman's role in Enemy of the State referenced an earlier role in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), Redford's world-weary role as Nathan Muir could be considered the oblique inverse of the embattled journalist he played in Three Days of the Condor (1975). When agents search through his office for files on Bishop, Muir sums up his modus operandi to secretary Jennip: "Most of it's in my head, anyway. Old school."

In fact Muir's "old school" tactics during his counter-investigation are worth examining: they embody the "human intelligence" required in a multi-polar environment that defines the post-9/11 world. "Humint" has been sacrificed to budget cuts, performance reviews and the latest high technology upgrades. Muir understands that the nuts-and-bolts of intelligence work are interpreting data (news monitoring and satellite reports), eliciting information, creating diverse networks, impelling others to mutually-beneficial ends, and questioning the underlying dynamics at work in every situation. During his interrogation by the investigative taskforce, Muir turns The Company's culture back on itself, demanding to know the larger picture and why his interrogators are so willing to sacrifice Bishop's life. Muir survives through a combination of critical realism and continuous strategic adaptation.

Geopolitics Lite