# Entrapment (1999)

### reviewed by
David N. Butterworth

    ENTRAPMENT
    A film review by David N. Butterworth
    Copyright 1999 David N. Butterworth

    **1/2 (out of ****)

At the ripe old age of 68, Sean Connery still has what it takes to carry a motion picture. Not only is his name still prominent up there on the marquee, but in "Entrapment," the elegantly aging Connery is asked to do more than a bivouac of actors half his age and he *still* gets the girl (even if this one happens to be 40 years his junior).

While some might take affront to the age difference, I didn't, simply because Catherine Zeta-Jones ("The Mask of Zorro") has never seemed much of a push-over on camera. In "Entrapment," Connery and Zeta-Jones click, and their relationship is one of two reasons to see the film. The other is sitting back and enjoying what is essentially an old-style heist picture, aided and abetted by some new-fangled technical gadgetry.

"Entrapment" is the kind of film that re-awakens interest in those classic caper films of the sixties and seventies, with their rare artifacts encased in glass, sophisticated surveillance systems, and invisible webs of laser beams criss-crossing museum floors like an elaborate cat's cradle. If you've seen the trailers, you'll have seen Zeta-Jones gyrating and contorting her spandex-clad body under, over, and through the red security rays. I guess the producers felt the scene wouldn't have had the same oomph with Connery in the catsuit.

Zeta-Jones plays Gin Baker, an insurance investigator who suspects that the recent theft of a Rembrandt painting from a seemingly impenetrable skyscraper is the work of master art thief Robert MacDougal. In order to prove it, she sets up a similarly impossible heist, with an antique Chinese mask as the bait, and convinces "Mac" to work with her. She has the code; he has the know-how. Inevitably, their cat-and-mouse antics lead to discovery, but then Gin dangles an even bigger carrot in front of the charismatic Scot.

In a brilliant piece of "casting," the world's tallest building--Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers--provides the international banking setting for Gin's latest scam. Her plan is to "stall" time for ten seconds on the eve of the millennium when computer security is temporarily shut down, allowing her to download $8 billion dollars into her private account. Is this the time to try, or to trust, as our leading players like to ask.

Director Jon Amiel keeps a tight lid on the proceedings, focusing the camera as much on his two principals--and their busy stunt doubles--as possible.

Ving Rhames is underutilized as MacDougal's shady associate, but that's just as well since his character is an atypically unpleasant one. Maury Chaykin almost makes up for Rhames' disappointing appearance by providing a small but entertaining role as an ultra-affected Malaysian art lover.

There are high-rise thrills and spills and a well-grounded relationship that rarely steps outside of its "let's not get personal" confines. "Entrapment" is good, clean, escapist fun. "Welcome to the rock, Miss Moneypenny."

    --
    David N. Butterworth
    dnb@dca.net

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