Entrapment
Assume the premise of a movie is to follow a burgeoning relationship between two thieves, one older and male, one younger and female, as they do several jobs together and learn to trust each other. What can we envision going wrong in the film, given this plot outline?
1. A forced and extremely unlikely romantic relationship between the two characters;
2. The older male thief taking on a paternal role towards the younger female, especially when combined with 1;
3.The female thief behaving impetuously and stupidly and the male thief having to correct her mistakes and always be ready with a back-up plan;
4. The male thief behaving constantly in ways that are cool and pre-meditated while the female thief is put in positions where she is either objectified or flustered or both;
5. The male thief eventually being the one to sell the female thief out, and her reacting with screams and tears;
6. The male thief saving the female thief from death and/or imprisonment;
7. The inclusion of a sole character of color, who is the most underhanded and unpleasant person in the film.
The impressive thing--the only impressive thing--about Jon Amiel's 1999 film Entrapment is that it manages not to pick and choose from this list, but actually includes every single possible thing that could make the movie terrible. Established high-profile thief Robert MacDougal (Sean Connery) acts not only as a patriarchal teacher to much younger female thief Virginia Baker (Catherine Zeta-Jones), but also as a lecherous watcher (that scene where she is practicing slithering through lasers while blindfolded and he's all but drooling?) and unwittingly seduced potential lover. He not only saves her in the end (a couple of times), but is constantly shown to be the man with the plan while she rushes into things unthinkingly. And, eventually, he is the one who has pulled the wool over her eyes, not the other way around. All in all, he's smarter, more in control, and more suave. Even though she's the one who has spent five years under cover planning the big job, she is played as the hapless apprentice. Upon first meeting her, Mac steals Virginia's clothes and then complains about her being naked, and it doesn't get any better from there.
The film's failures on race are just as spectacular as those on gender. There is a single character of color, FBI agent Aaron Thibadeaux (Ving Rhames). His function in the plot is mainly intrigue (whose side is he on? whose side is Mac on? etc.), but really he's just plain annoying, and also prone towards sexist remarks, as when he first observes Virginia swimming and says that she is probably a size 6, but would look better in a size 4. Everybody in the film is underhanded, but the single Black character gets to be underhanded and obnoxious.
I have nothing good to say about this movie. There was not a single moment in it where I thought "hey, that's kind of cool." Nothing. It was, beginning to end, a sexist, racist crime caper movie. So it gets one star for its overwhelming typicality.
