Entrapment

When a priceless Rembrandt is stolen in a daring skyscraper robbery in New York, all the evidence points to Robert ‘Mac’ MacDougal (Connery), renowned as the world’s greatest art thief. The theft could cost the insurance company $24 million but strong-willed and resourceful (and stunningly athletic) investigator Gin Baker (Zeta-Jones) has a plan to entrap Mac, and persuades her boss (Patton) to let her go after him.

Her plan involves presenting Mac with an offer he couldn’t possibly refuse - the key to overcoming the security system protecting a $40 million Chinese mask. Sure enough, the ageing master criminal takes the bait, and the unlikely partners-in-crime plot the ultimate heist - an ambitious attempt on the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpar, the tallest buildings in the world, that could net them a cool eight billion dollars. Not a bad way to see in the New Year.

Despite struggling with the American accent, Zeta-Jones looks smashing in the skin-tight cat suit (neither a striped sweater nor a swag bag in sight) and the chemistry between her and Connery is almost convincing despite an age gap a hairs-width on the right side of 40 years.

Though the script threatens to suggest the writer scribbled it in crayon before he was old enough to use ink, Entrapment is a glossy and entertaining thriller that delivers the goods, with oodles of high-tech gadgetry, stunning visuals and did I mention Catherine Zeta-Jones in a skin-tight cat suit?

Simon C. Williams