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Bad! Bad! Bad!

Rajeev Srinivasan

I have great respect for certain actors and I am likely, for instance, to go to any film in which Jack Nicholson appears. I have sat through such treacly stuff as Terms Of Endearment only because it had Nicholson in it; and, in truth, whenever he was on screen, he stole the show. Similarly, I like Sean Connery; but, despite him, Entrapment is a bomb. The action is listless, the plot is implausible and the ending predictably mushy. It is a pretty bad film, all things considered.

In point of fact, the film comes across as a thinly disguised, two hour long publicity video for Malaysia's new Petronas Towers, with a little jewel theft thrown in. It is quite likely that the Malaysians sponsored the film and paid to feature the Towers, which, if I am not mistaken, are the tallest buildings in the world, and something the Malaysians are inordinately proud of.

Other than admiring Connery, my friends and I were keen on having a good look at the delectable Catherine Zeta-Jones. Alas, unlike her sultry self in Zorro, Zeta-Jones here is pretty pedestrian, apart from some sinuous wriggling (no, not that kind of wriggling) in tights in a scene where she attempts to avoid the laser beams guarding an artifact.

Connery is a thief who specialises in objets d'art; Zeta-Jones is an insurance company operative who is attempting to bring him to justice. Or maybe she is in it for herself, as she may have a plan to doublecross the insurance company and help herself to a few billions from a global bank clearinghouse operation. Unfortunately, the audience stops caring about the plot -- such as it is -- after the first few minutes.

Add a few assorted heavies from the FBI and the insurance company, a lovely castle that Connery has acquired using his ill-gotten wealth, some atmospherics, and a storyline that seems to throw in a lot of red herrings and unnecessary twists and turns -- and that's pretty much all there is to the film. Apart from, that is, a little high-wire stunt work from the aforementioned Petronas Towers.

The theme of the gentleman jewel thief has been worked to death before, both in English and in Hindi. I particularly remember the dapper David Niven in such a role. The twist here, of course, is that both Connery and Zeta-Jones are adept jewel thiefs -- ascribe that to 90s-style affirmative action for women. Some of the hardware is also quite interesting, but the idea that you could manipulate the atomic clocks at international bank clearinghouses is a little farfetched.

The heist of a mask from an art exhibition is interesting, with the approach through inhospitable terrain and the meticulous planning to attempt a flawless execution. Thereafter, the technical mumbo-jumbo about getting at the world's banking system through a Year2000 planned shutdown did not seem all that feasible.

The sort-of romance between the 60 plus Connery and the 20-something Zeta-Jones comes across a little forced, all though Connery did well with a similarly young Julia Ormond's Guinevere in his 1995 role as King Arthur, with Richard Gere as his foil, Launcelot, in the visually stunning First Knight. Here, though, there is little chemistry between the two principals.

Sean Connery, it must be admitted, has improved with age -- I think he looks better now than he did in his James Bond roles. His gray beard certainly gives him a look of distinction, but his roles lately have been rather ordinary, for instance in the Michael Crichton thriller, Rising Sun. The Scottish burr to his accent has gotten thicker and more impenetrable with time; I understand that in real life he is a very much a Scottish nationalist.

The Welsh Zeta-Jones looks suitably gorgeous but it is hard to discern any great acting skill beneath that lovely exterior. And she doesn't take her clothes off in this film, despite what the trailer cunningly implies. I did like Connery's line to her, wondering if there were any man she had not been able to "manipulate, beguile and seduce." "No," she replies; that is not hard to believe.

Altogether, an eminently missable film. When we walked out, my friends and I wondered why we had wasted a perfectly good Saturday afternoon on this mediocrity. As Siskel and Ebert used to say in the old days, "Two thumbs down!"

EXTERNAL LINKS
The official site
Los Angeles Times review
The Salon review