April 30, 1999

FILM REVIEW

'Entrapment': They're a Devilish Match, but Who's Conning Who?

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By JANET MASLIN

he caper film "Entrapment" summons the days when being a thief with taste was the profession of choice for the soigne movie hero. It resurrects that art of gamesmanship by casting Sean Connery as Robert "Mac" Macdougal, the kind of baronial art connoisseur who has assembled his collection by unorthodox means.

	David Appleby/20th Century Fox
	Sean Connery plays a suave thief and Catherine Zeta-Jones an insurance investigator in Jon Amiel's   thriller, ``Entrapment.''

He presumably meets his match in Catherine Zeta-Jones' Virginia "Gin" Baker, the most glamorous of insurance investigators. When the story sends these two to an elegant party, extras swivel their heads to gape at Ms. Zeta-Jones in ways that don't look rehearsed.

Production notes for the film refer to the ensuing romantic adventure as "an electric pas de deux of wariness and attraction," adding that it involves "a daring plan for a multibillion-dollar heist tied to the dawn of a new millennium." So it may not be a surprise to learn that the idea for "Entrapment" was sold on the basis of a seven-line proposal.

Happily, the explanation for who the characters are and how they got that way is similarly brief, since there's no good way to explain them. Says Mac, when asked about his past: "My situation is so complicated, I can't explain."

And actually, he doesn't have to. Combine two stars of this wattage with a lot of techno-talk and elaborate heist plotting and you get plenty of good reasons to pay attention. The match between these two may sound unlikely, but it works because it isn't forced, and because both actors are so mischievously game. Besides, it's not hard to believe that when Ms. Zeta-Jones' Gin begins performing feline gymnastics at Mac's Scottish castle (another selling point), Mac would pay attention.

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As directed by Jon Amiel with cool efficiency like that of his "Copycat," the film engages in mild cat-and-mousing about whether either character is out to deceive the other. (The answers: yes and yes.) But all it really needs are a surface gloss, a flirtatious tone and a couple of thefts that are planned like military operations.

Truth in advertising department: ads that depict Ms. Zeta-Jones in spidery crouch fake a much lower neckline than she wears in that particular scene and give a sinister cast to what is actually a gymnastic workout. Gin is actually preparing to dodge a cat's cradle of laser beams during a burglary rehearsal so graceful it suggests the movements of tai chi. The film finds many opportunities for Ms. Zeta-Jones to show off her slithery skills in this department.

While she plays her role in fresh, headstrong fashion, Connery has the effortless authority to give the film some ballast, and the unalloyed charisma to make the whole thing look easy. It helps that the romance isn't overworked and that his Mac has an imperious, crotchety streak to keep his much younger partner at bay.

With Ron Bass and William Broyles (the former editor of Newsweek and Texas Monthly) as screenwriters, the script tosses in a convenient prohibition that it would be "against the rules" for these two to get involved. This is only slightly less credible than the duo's ultimate gambit of trying to steal billions from a Malaysian bank in the world's tallest building on New Year's Eve.

That sequence, a vertiginous show stopper, combines new ways to make the palms sweat with a humorous nostalgia for how heists worked when this genre was hot. Among the film's high-tech details are its scheme for outwitting computers during only a few hugely profitable seconds.

It all boils down to getting access to a highly guarded computer or two. "This is it?" Connery's character complains in disbelief. "Whatever happened to money? Where's the good old-fashioned loot?"

PRODUCTION NOTES:

'ENTRAPMENT'

Directed by Jon Amiel; written by Ron Bass and William Broyles, based on a story by Bass and Michael Hertzberg; director of photography, Phil Meheux; edited by Terry Rawlings; music by Christopher Young; production designer, Norman Garwood; produced by Sean Connery, Hertzberg and Rhonda Tollefson; released by 20th Century Fox and Regency Enterprises.

With: Sean Connery (Mac), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Gin), Ving Rhames (Thibadeaux), Will Patton (Cruz), Maury Chaykin (Conrad Greene), Kevin McNally (Haas) and Terry O'Neill (Quinn).

Running time: 105 minutes.

"Entrapment" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes occasional profanity and brief, shadowy nudity.