Entrapment

Entrapment: When this movie came out I can remember my older brother and others talking about how horrendous it was.  Well it's been 13 years and I'd mostly forgotten what happened, so I gave it another look.

While I don't think it was nearly so bad as I remember my brother ranting, it's not that great either.

In general I like thief movies and there are lots of good ones.*  In general I like Sean Connery and he's made lots of good movies.**  In general I have no problem with Catherine Zeta Jones.  So this should have been a winner in my book but it fails in several places.

The main place is in the robberies.  If you are going to make a movie about the intricacies of a robbery try not to make them ridiculous.

Case in point: A large part of the first half of the movie is Jones learning to wriggle and twist through the grid of lasers that make up the defenses around a golden mask but unfortunately for her they are invisible.  Except that what she does is retarded.  At one point she slides under one of the lasers.  Looking at the grid it seems pretty clear to me that she should have done the same slide clear across the floor.

At another point she extends one leg out and then balancing on the other foot slowly rotates with leg extended between two beams until she's turned 180 degrees.  She then carefully brings her leg in and then turns her whole body 90 degrees more.  If you could turn 90 degrees without problem, what was the point of the whole leg sticking out business?

At another point (during the actual robbery) she's supposedly straddling a laser while face down.  (The laser passing under her.  To get to this position she quite clearly slides her left hand along the floor.  Which would have meant her arm passed through the laser.

Then to make the whole thing even more ridiculous after several hours*** of this nonsense when she finally has the mask, Connery tells her "Okay now get out of there in a hurry."  We then from outside the doorway see into the room as Jones walks quickly back to hole she crawled out of just in time to avoid the guard seeing her.  Leaving me to wonder, why didn't she take that route in the first place?  Or perhaps the alarm system turns itself off once you've successfully gotten to the mask.

Anyway, I went on a bit to long about that but it serves the point.  There are other similar bits of nonsense along the way that just detract from the movie.

Finally, the movie in an attempt to be clever throws in a twist at the end that doesn't quite make sense.  Of course the motivations of the Insurance Company Jones supposedly is working for don't make sense the entire movie, so you're used to it by that point.

Finally, finally, when you are running from the police who mere seconds ago had you arrested in the train station.  The last place you go is back to the train station.  Of course that begs the question, what kind of stupid police officer let's your arrested suspect say their goodbyes standing right beside the place where the train stops?

Entrapment: B-

* - The Score and the Italian Job to name two off of the top of my head.
** - And several stinkers as well, but as I've said before nobody bats 1000.
*** - Okay minutes, but it sure felt like hours.