Entrapment (1999)

(In theaters, May 1999) Now here’s a splendid example of a good potential turned into barely adequate material. Where to start…? Catherine Zeta-Jones may be breathtakingly beautiful, but she plays her character like a spoiled child and seldom appears believable in any of her incarnations. Sean Connery is his dapper self, so darn cool that we can only wonder why he keeps playing into these awful films. Ving Rhames is wasted. The script -filled with awful dialogue- smells a lot like a first unedited draft. The editing is weak, avoiding to film a car chase but choosing to spend almost a full minute on Zeta-Jones’ gymnastics. There are plot holes big enough to drive a train car through. The ending is weak. The age differential between the two leads borders on the laughable. (My sister suggested that Baker should have been MacDonald’s long-lost daughter, which would have been interesting. She -my sister- has a future in screenwriting.) Only the heist sequences are rather good, if you exclude the extremely convenient escapes. The overall result is muddled enough to avoid recommendation.