The National Daily World Enquiring Globe

Film Review - Entrapment

I feel like such a vulture tearing apart this dead carcass of a really poorly-crafted film.

Entrapment is supposed to be a thrill a minute Mission: Impossible type of intrigue film. Well, it's some of that. But it's too poorly strung together and just falls flat on its face.

Sean Connery is Robert MacDougal, the world's master thief. Catherine Zeta-Jones is Gin Baker, the insurance investigator who is out to catch him. Or that's the story in the beginning; the characters change their roles so much you would think the writer didn't really have a good idea to begin with. That would be wrong. I think this was a great piece of writing that got caught in the formula movie machine.

The first third of the film is an excuse to do really tight shots of Zeta-Jones' butt. I mean, in one shot we were so close, I could see the outline of her thong. Catherine, babe, if you're going to do this, you shouldn't wear any underwear! Didn't anyone learn that in film school or acting school, or at the disco in the '70s?

OK, lets' leave Zeta-Jones' behind behind and move onto really crappy editing. There are action sequences in Entrapment with shots missing. Cliffhangers that suddenly cut to the end where they are out of danger without us seeing how they did it. Hello? This isn't Siegfried and Roy! You're supposed to show us how they get out of it. Didn't anyone learn that in film school or editing school, or in the Disco in the '70s?

And while we're on editing, no awards for the sound department. Zeta-Jones' ADR (the process of replacing dialogue that wasn't useable from the set) was horrible. In one shot, her voice dropped an octave. I thought she had just hit puberty. Didn't anyone learn that in film school or ADR school or in the Disco in the '70s?

Entrapment is a poorly-shot, poorly-edited, poorly-everything film -- with one exception. Zeta-Jones pulled off a great American accent. Zeta-Jones being a Brit, did great voice work as she did in The Mask of Zorro.

Enough of Zeta-Jones. Let's talk about computers. Damn, these people don't know anything about them. But since computers are a very important part of this film, you would think someone would have hired a Twinkie-eating friend to polish this part of the script. Here are things that happen in the film that don't happen with computers. First, untested software doesn't work in an unfamiliar computer on the first try. You usually have to call in your Twinkie-eating friend to fix it. Second, the Y2K bug isn't about what happens at midnight. It's about what happens after midnight. Shutting off communications to a super-computer for 10 seconds isn't going to fix your Y2K problems. If the filmmaker had taken a few computer classes instead of spending all that time in the disco, he wouldn't have made all these mistakes.

Finally, let's talk about pandering. Connery plays a man in his late 60s. Zeta-Jones plays a woman in her early 30s. The very thought that this woman would have a romantic interest in this man is ridiculous. This is just playing to men's fantasies that young women want them. I just can't buy any of this. I know what you're going to say, "Relax, kid, it's just a movie!" Maybe, but why couldn't it have been a good one?

Dust Bag Full

Film Facts

Directed by Jon Amiel

Released in 1999

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Reviewed by Mongo