ENTRAPMENT
An original Rembrandt is stolen from a New York skyscraper by a mysterious
burglar. The insurance company responsible for the painting sends its best
undercover agent, Gin Baker (Zeta-Jones), to investigate. But when criminal
mastermind Robert "Mac" MacDougal (Connery), the prime suspect,
catches her following him, she tells him she's actually a thief, and she
has big plans for the two of them.
She wants to steal a priceless, ancient Chinese mask from the well-guarded
Bedford Palace. But she needs his help. Mac has the technical knowhow to
break in and foil the system, and he also has apparently unlimited access
to every kind of robbery equipment known to man. If this job goes well,
Gin will let Mac in on the BIG caper: At the strike of midnight on New Millenium's
Eve, she plans to reprogram the computers of the International Clearance
Bank of Kuala Lampur, so that they will automatically deposit small amounts
from branches all over the world into the account she has established. (Didn't
we hear this same idea in Office Space?)
The payoff should be about $8 billion, which she plans to share with Mac.
Meanwhile, of course, she's telling her boss (Will Patton) that she's just
playing Mac for a sap so they can bust him for the BIG caper.
During their time together, Mac and Gin build an excruciatingly dull
relationship, with him bossing her around and her learning an idiotic ballet
she must know to avoid the laser beams at the museum. The mask heist is
dumb enough, but the following Kuala Lampur business is nothing short of
ridiculous. Mac and Gin are so darned smart, everything comes easily to
them. They outsmart the cops; they outsmart the bank software; they outsmart
each other. They hang from wires 100 stories up; they elude SWAT teams;
they appear and disappear like Colonel Flagg from M*A*S*H.
Written by William Broyles Jr. from a story by Ronald Bass and Michael Hertzberg, Entrapment ensnares us in a movie theater and won't let go until we've endured almost 2 hours of nauseatingly "clever" banter, a boring but obligatory love affair, and a high-pressure storyline that grows more implausible with each passing minute. **½