Spy Game
Universal Pictures | Release Date: November 21, 2001 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Washington PostRita Kempley
The movie is sleek and shiny as a new bullet, reflecting Scott's patented surplus of style. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianKim Morgan
There's more to this movie. Like Pitt at his best, it's pretty, gritty, engrossing and fun. Read full review
80
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
With its cast of back-stabbing functionaries and desk jockeys, Spy Game makes the sport and hard work of espionage seem chillingly real. Read full review
80
Village VoiceMark Holcomb
Happily, beneath the film's nostalgic veneer and tooth-rattling visual and aural effects lies a mature ambiguity that's unusual for a holiday blockbuster -- and all but unheard of in a Tony Scott movie. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Serves up a judicious blend of showy action, political intrigue, ticking-clock suspense and intramural CIA one-upsmanship for mainstream entertainment. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
The script provides an excellent payoff, although action fans may not agree, because that payoff is the equivalent of a Cheshire cat's grin. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMark Caro
If you like Redford, Spy Game will be a real treat: a fast electric thriller full of the old Sundance charm and pizzazz. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The film is brimming with plots, counterplots, dossiers, and sinister corrupt priorities, all held together by the telephoto obsidian gloss of Scott's look-ma-no-pauses style. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The movie asks tough, unflinching questions about America's responsibility to maintain world peace -- and the price we are willing to pay in order to accomplish that. Timely stuff, indeed. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Gripping, improbable plot marked by exciting sequences of action.
75
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
Enormously satisfying and fun to watch. Read full review
75
USA TodayMike Clark
More than a quarter-century ago, Redford played a young CIA employee in "Three Days of the Condor." Someday, it will make a great living-room double bill with Spy Game -- the actor then and now. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeJay Carr
There's something elegiac in Redford's spy who knows he's a dinosaur but still has a few moves left.
70
SalonCharles Taylor
Manages to be entertaining and reasonably exciting. Scott's style may be slick and tricky but, if this and his last film, "Enemy of the State," are any indication, he's lost the glossy sadism that characterized his previous work. Read full review
70
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Entertaining but farfetched, Spy Game might have looked less meretricious a few months back. But the real world has sabotaged its pretense of authenticity. Enjoy it for what it is, a fleet, handsome fantasy of globe-hopping blond demigods.
70
L.A. WeeklyJohn Powers
The supremely attractive leads, exotic locations (Vietnam, Berlin and Beirut) and fetishized violence imbue the whole intelligence game with undeniable glamour. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
It's well-plotted, acted with a charismatic flair and right on the zeitgeist. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Fans of swooping helicopter shots, alleys filled with backlit geysers of steam, and jump-cut editing that makes MTV look like Ingmar Bergman will relish the intercontinental intrigue and huggermugger that is Spy Game. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
It is not a bad movie, mind you; it's clever and shows great control of craft, but it doesn't care, and so it's hard for us to care about. To see it once is to plumb to the bottom of its mysteries, and beyond. Read full review
63
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
We don't experience the drama from the inside out because everything is on the surface. Redford is the only one who supplies internal life to Spy Game. Read full review
60
New Times (L.A.)Gregory Weinkauf
A mess, but it's a rousing mess, with ample humor and action to satisfy the discerning dullard within. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
What Spy Game turns out to be is the old reliable family car spruced up around the edges in an attempt to convince a new generation of buyers that it's a hot number. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
To make silk purses from turgid passages, Mr. Scott does what he always does, gooses them up with every trick in the big-budget book.
50
Film ThreatMichael Dequina
Less Bond than simply boring, a tedious and overdirected race-against-time drama with a few espionage elements thrown in. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
Don't you hate movies where one character is so much smarter than everyone else? That's only one problem with Spy Game, a glossy, suffocatingly predictable star vehicle for Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. Read full review
50
The New York TimesDana Stevens
The problem lies in the calculating pretentiousness of using human misery to make shallow entertainment seem serious. It's worth comparing Spy Game with "The Tailor of Panama," John Boorman's far superior exercise in post-cold-war spycraft. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineFrank Lovece
Extremely well-shot espionage thriller that might have worked as an old-fashioned guy's-guy movie if the guys involved had any real, human personality and the espionage were actually thrilling. Read full review
40
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Reasonably entertaining spy-versus-spy shenanigans were for me partially undercut by the hypocritical pretense that the CIA and its various forms of mischief were somehow being ridiculed. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
A dead-chamber misfire, a hollowpoint dud. Read full review
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