A high-stakes caper flick with sex-object stars needs either a diabolically clever plot or an irresistible romance to succeed.
Entrapment has neither.
The movie does boast glitzy locations (London, Scotland, Kuala Lampur), and some terrific, pulse-pounding stunt work.
The stars are shiny enough; Sean Connery plays a globe-trotting master thief called Mac. Catherine Zeta-Jones (Mask of Zorro) plays his pursuer, Gin, who is either an insurance cop or a thief herself.
The how and why of what they are doing seems interesting enough at first, but the plot is so full of holes there’s no percentage in paying attention to it.
Here is one small example: The thieves pull off a complex heist after weeks of hard work. They are, by my count, 10 seconds ahead of the police, through an escape route a baby could follow. So what do they do when they get outside? They hang around arguing.
Actually, they try to kill one another, but I was so distracted thinking ‘‘Hey! You’re surrounded by police! Shouldn’t you, like, move it?’’ that I couldn’t really get involved in whatever the near-fatal spat was about.
They do get away, but we never see how. This kind of thing happens early and often, to the point that the whole enterprise would collapse if minimal logic were applied. Following the action is like trying to assemble a puzzle with pieces from six different boxes.
OK, so how about romance?
Even worse.
Folks, he’s literally old enough to be her grandfather. The only way the movie makes sense out of its hideously awkward stab at a love connection is by turning Gin into a petulant, neurotic, needy, unstable adolescent. In other words: She’s a woman who would glom onto any male who wandered across her radar beam.
Call me cold-hearted, but that ain’t romantic, it’s pathetic.
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