Review of Spy Game

I liked the movie, but feel some of the elements didn’t gel together. Can’t put my finger on why.

Robert Redford plays Muir, a CIA field agent who handles defectors and informants. Brad Pitt plays his young protege, Bishop, who refuses to obey the principles of spy tradecraft.

The opening scene has Bishop getting captured by the Chinese during an unsanctioned / rogue rescue operation. Muir gets pulled in by CIA bigwigs to help them understand Bishop and how he thinks, so the movie spends most of its runtime detailing, through flashbacks, how Muir and Bishop came to work together, only to have a falling out.

The turning point is Muir realizing that he may be able to save bishop’s life, but only by breaking CIA regulations — just as Bishop repeatedly broke the rules of spycraft during his training. In flashbacks, Muir is formerly insistent on strict observance to the rules of the “spy game”; in the present, his imminent retirement has left him disillusioned with the CIA. And so he steals keycards, forges official telegrams, leaks information to the media, and burns documents in a desperate but quiet struggle to save Bishop within 6 hours.