"Can we do a cool hand signal, like in The Sting."

It's veteran CIA agent Nathan Muir's last day before retirement and you know what that means. No, not a farewell lunch and a bunch of gag gifts from colleagues, silly. This is a movie. Try a former protégé in trouble, potentially disastrous ramifications for U.S. foreign policy, and smarmy young agents who need to be shown what the old man can do.

Yeah, that's more like it!

The protégé is Tom Bishop who was captured while on an unauthorized mission to break somebody out of a Chinese prison. We learn that the Chinese will execute Tom in 24 hours unless they're given good reason not to. Nathan is brought into a roomful of people who don't seem to have Tom's best interests at heart to give them some background on the rogue agent. This works out great for you, the viewer, since it allows for a series of flashbacks that show how the two men met, how Muir recruited and trained Bishop, and several of their significant missions.

Crouching Icon, Hidden Heartthrob.

There's a lot to love about this movie. First off, you have Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, playing mentor and mentee, respectively. Fine actors, both of them, and they slip effortlessly into their roles. I could spend all day watching Redford train Pitt to be a spy. The chemistry in their scenes together is enough reason to see the movie, but I also liked Redford in the CIA headquarters scenes, his easy charm working overtime as he pulls the strings necessary to save his friend.

The flashback-heavy structure mostly worked for me too, though there were times it seemed like Nathan was going into a little more detail than necessary in his story-telling, seeing as how they had a deadline and all.

Director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State) pulls out all the stylistic stops on this one, punctuating scenes with quick cuts, freeze frames and swooping panoramic shots. I mostly enjoyed his approach in all its conspicuous glory and felt that it helped ratchet up the tension in what could have otherwise been a rather talky action movie. However, I could have done without his device of freeze-framing whenever somebody mentioned the time and putting up a title saying something like, "2:00. 18 hours left until execution." That giant sucking sound you hear is the audience being pulled out of the movie every time this happened.

"I'll give you one million dollars to sleep with your wife. Wait, sorry, wrong movie."

The intelligent script, by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata, investigates the ethical dilemmas inherent in the CIA's mission without beating the audience over the head with them. We see Nathan and Tom arguing about the hard choices that have to be made, unfortunate but acceptable losses, who gets used and who gets hurt. What we don't see, interestingly, is a heartfelt defense of these tactics as an important tool for protecting democracy and freedom. It's a job, and these are the things they have to do to get the job done.

Mostly what we see is the kind of man Tom is and the kind of man Nathan has become. The kind of man who comes into the office and immediately, instinctively, unflinchingly starts lying to his colleagues, hiding files, manipulating people who are allegedly on his side. He's played the game so long he doesn't know how to do anything else. What's truly intriguing in Spy Game isn't the global machinations of the CIA, but the toll they take on its agents.

Can't get enough of Brad Pitt? Check out this list of five more Pitt-enhanced films worth checking out.

Gorilla Pants rating: 3 out of 4 bananas