Entrapment (1999)

A blockbuster vehicle for Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones that hopes viewers are distracted enough by star power to overlook the sheer preposterousness of the plot, Entrapment isn’t a very good film, but it kind of works for what it wants to do.

Zeta-Jones is Gin, an insurance agent who becomes obsessed with catching the best in the business, Mac (Connery). She has been following his trail for a long time now, and she knows that she has a payday to tempt him. Mac is suspicious from the very beginning though, and so begins a wary dance of mistrust between them.

Directed by Jon Amiel, a man who spent a few years specialising in slick, forgettable, Hollywood product, Entrapment feels tailor-made for its stars. Writers Ronald Bass and William Broyles Jr. manage to play up the strengths of both, either deliberately or simply by writing a project that always aimed to have “charming male lead” and “sexy female lead” at the heart of it. 

Released in 1999, this felt dated within a year or two. The plot hinges on the millennium changeover, the age gap between Connery and Zeta-Jones felt like, even for Hollywood, it was stretching things a bit too far, and the most popular sequence (which I will highlight in the next paragraph) was shown again and again whenever the film was being discussed favourably.

Connery is allowed to be his roguish charming best, and he goes along with all of the nonsense with a wry grin and a twinkle in his eye, while Zeta-Jones works in his shadow, breaking out occasionally in sequences that gratuitously dwell on her classic beauty (case in point - the training sequence that has her contorting her body as she avoids “security lasers”). It is a fairly thankless role for her, but she acquits herself well enough to the task. Although the cast isn’t huge, there are also welcome performances from Ving Rhames and Will Patton, two great actors who earned some decent paychecks from this kind of fare while they were on the radar of the casting directors.

Compared to other con/caper movies in the same wheelhouse, this is pretty bad. Compared to the slick blockbusters of this time that put star power ahead of logic and plotting, many being Simpson and/or Bruckheimer productions, this is pretty bad. Compared to other films starring Connery or Zeta-Jones, well, they both have filmographies that fluctuate wildly in quality. Just accept the general badness of this anyway, and then allow yourself to enjoy it nonetheless. Because sometimes nonsense involving attractive a-list stars is enough to keep you entertained for an hour or two. And this still manages to entertain me, despite me knowing that it’s generally bad.

6/10

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