It's been a while since I watched a good spy movie. I think the last one I saw was Body of Lies, which wasn't particularly good. In fact, after seeing it, I said that the entire genre was completely played out. This remains mostly true, but I will grant this movie an exception.Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) is a CIA handler on his last day before retirement, when he gets word that an asset he developed named Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) has been arrested in China for espionage. He finagles his way into the meeting set up for fact-finding about Tom and goes over how he met the young agent and developed him. As he stalls for time, he has to figure out precisely what he can do to keep Tom from being executed in less than 24 hours.
Probably because it is less concerned about getting all the tradecraft and personalities absolutely precisely right, it's able to be much more entertaining as a movie. Redford is impossibly smooth, spinning facts this way and that, while Pitt broods and does all the action. Good team. Plus, they're not exactly hard on the eyes, either.
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