# Entrapment (1999)

### reviewed by
Jon Popick

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

I had two good ways to start off my review for Entrapment but couldn't decide on which to use.

There is the more obvious approach: Goofing on the studio's tagline for the film - `The trap is set' - by saying something clever, like that the `bait' is its two charismatic leads and the `trap' is an utterly implausible story, with unsuspecting viewers being snared by its star power and eye-popping trailer.

Then there is the more polished route: Taking a piece of dialogue from the film and then turning it around to poke fun at the filmmakers, who obviously felt that this particular chunk of babble was so important that it had to be repeated a few times - like `First we try, then we trust.' I could say that potential moviegoers might use this wisdom to decide whether to fork over seven bucks to see a film that was directed by the guy who filmed the Bill Murray bomb The Man Who Knew Too Little (not to mention the producer of 1999's worst film, Simply Irresistible) and written by the guy responsible for four consecutive bore-fests (My Best Friend's Wedding, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, What Dreams May Come and Stepmom).

The film opens just weeks before the millenium during the high-tech robbery of a heavily guarded office in a New York City skyscraper. The bandit makes off with a Botticelli painting, but has a sense of humor and leaves a velvet painting of Elvis in its stead. The cagey thief jams the rolled-up masterpiece into a mailing tube – addressed to Kuala Lumpur – and drops it down the building's mail chute.

The brigand is believed to be super-criminal Robert `Mack' MacDougal (Sean Connery, The Avengers), an aging villain known for his daring larceny who has been hunted for years by a company that insures high prices of art around the world. Legend has it that years ago, two if its employees were sent to apprehend Mack and were never heard from again. Mysterious, eh?

Catherine Zeta-Jones (The Mask of Zorro) is an employee of this insurance company, as well as a limber gymnast and a bit of an aficionado of the Mack legacy. She convinces her boss (Will Patton, The Postman) to let her go after Mack, but are her intentions to entrap the unscrupulous burglar, or to join him in the biggest robbery that the world has ever seen? You won't find out who's playing whom until the end.

While Entrapment is not particularly bad, it does offer plot holes bigger than Dionne Warwick's nostrils. Case in point: Viewers won't have a clue what Zeta-Jones' character is named until about two-thirds of the way into the film, when Mack calls to her. And even then, you're not sure what he said. Jen? Gem? Jed? It's actually Gin – as in Virginia – but you get the idea.

And how about the part where Gin and Mack steal an ancient Chinese mask from a room guarded with several dozen security lasers? Sure, it's suspenseful – Gin has only three minutes to maneuver through the grid-like maze, make off with the mask and get out – but it takes her 2:25 just to get to the booty, leaving only 35 seconds to escape. Viewers don't get to see the escape, but I'm sure must have been quite dazzling. Maybe the picture was running too long and that part had to be cut out. Hey, you've gotta cut something.

The ending is also exciting, involving a risky $8 billion heist at the International Clearance House Bank in Malaysia, but this stuff has all been done better before. Even in 1992's Sneakers, starring another guy who seemed too old to be getting himself into trouble (Robert Redford, who was still decades younger than Connery is now). On the positive side, Entrapment isn't bogged down by silly subplots – there are very few characters in the film – and its action sequences are capably lensed by Philip Meheux (The Mask of Zorro). Ving Rhames (Out of Sight) provides big laughs as Mack's confidante and tech supplier, while Maury Chaykin (Mouse Hunt) has a very hammy role as a Kuala Lumpur fencer of incredibly valuable `hot' pieces of art. His character would not have handled this film.

1:52 – R for violence and mild adult language

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews