Redford Keeps That Twinkle In His Spy  (an excerpt)

Spy Game

Director: Tony Scott. Starring: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt **** (RECOMMENDED)

by Matthew Bond

You have to be either very brave or barking mad to release a film that features global CIA conspiracies, suicide bombings and collapsing buildings at the moment. Or you have to have Robert Redford and Brad Pitt in it and think... hmm, we might just get away with it.

Slightly to my surprise, the makers of Spy Game do get away with it, and pretty handsomely. It's not an out-and-out action movie, more a tense and complex thriller that thankfully displays almost as much intelligence as it does Intelligence. And Redford - those handsome features now marked by the passing of time and not enough sun-block - is absolutely terrific.

Set in the frighteningly recent past of 1991, Redford plays Nathan Muir, an inevitably maverick CIA veteran about to begin his last day in the office before his long-planned retirement to the Bahamas.

But an early morning wakeup call from an even craggier David Hemmings in Hong Kong, where I suppose you just conceivably could be a CIA man with an English accent, warns him of a breaking crisis.

'Boy Scout' (no prizes for guessing that'll be Pitt) has been arrested by the Chinese while assisting a prison breakout, charged with espionage and is facing execution in 24 hours. As Muir jumps into his classic Porsche, only one thing seems certain: that retirement party is just going to have to wait.

What follows is a sort of mix between Le Carre and James Bond as Muir is hauled in by his superiors to be told officially that Boy Scout, the code name for Tom Bishop, has indeed been captured.

Locked inside a heavily guarded meeting room, they start poring over Bishop's career details, looking for...Well, good question.

You, I and certainly Muir would plump for something that would help to free Bishop, whom Muir recruited. But slowly, and certainly not very clearly, it becomes apparent that what the CIA bosses are looking for is a reason to disown Bishop and let the Chinese kill him without causing an international incident and damaging some imminent trade talks.

'I think I just figured it out,' drawls Muir after about half an hour. All I can say is that he gets there a long time before me - but then I quite like a bit of confusion with my thrillers.

Long before then, however, director Tony Scott, something of a specialist in against-the-clock conspiracies, as Crimson Tide and Enemy Of The State showed, has established the film's very effective structure. The intense meeting-room sessions are interrupted by long flashbacks as Muir recalls his mentor-pupil relationship with Bishop: how he first worked with him in Vietnam, how he recruited him in Berlin and how they fell out in Beirut. Of course, it's over a woman, which gives our own Catherine McCormack the chance to mix it with the mega-stars and float around in the sort of dresses they used to sell in Monsoon.

This range of periods and locations is very ambitious and not totally convincing. It's not often, after all, that you sit down to watch a breakout from a Chinese prison and find yourself thinking, 'Hey, isn't that in Oxford?' And it's even rarer that you discover you're right.

But the well edited tension and the acting are terrific, even if the plot twists are getting pretty outrageous by the final third.

Particularly impressive is another Brit, Stephen Dillane, playing an ambitious, humourless CIA apparatchik. Dillane's American accent seems a little wobbly at first but his facial expressions are an understated treat: delicious and, I hope, careertransforming.

This, however, is definitely Redford's film.

He may not be quite nasty enough for us to believe Muir could ever be in need of redemption, but that doesn't seem to matter. He gets some great tongue-in-cheek lines - 'Spies drink Scotch, never less than 12 years old' - and still looks great in a tuxedo on an early-morning Berlin rooftop (someone's been making too many commercials). But you know the best thing?

Also Showing  (an excerpt)

Spy Game (15)

by Anthony Quinn

Tony Scott evidently can't get spooks out of his head. Having put Will Smith through the espionage grinder in Enemy of the State, he's at it again with Spy Game, a portrait of friendship set against 20 years of the CIA's carrying on abroad. Robert Redford plays a veteran operative on the brink of retirement from the service when he gets wind of his one-time protégé (Brad Pitt) being arrested in China and sentenced to death. Problem is, the new brooms at the CIA (led by sniffy superior Stephen Dillane) aren't prepared to risk relations in the East and spring Pitt from his prison, so the rescue mission falls to cunning fox Redford. Spy Game turns out not at all bad, partly due to its ambitious flashback structure – Berlin 1975 and Beirut 1985 are its main co-ordinates – and partly due to the sly cat-and-mouse contest that's entrained within CIA HQ between Redford and the dastardly Dillane (shades of Kevin Costner outwitting his fellow spooks in No Way Out). Scott soft-pedals his usual gung-ho approach in favour of a more ruminative, even romantic, mood – Catherine McCormack plays an aid worker who may be jeopardising Pitt's cover – and there's something oddly moving in the sight of wrinkly old Redford passing on the mantle of Top Blond Bombshell to his natural heir.

Films of the week

Brad Pitt and Robert Redford in a fine movie - now there's a treat for our correspondent

by Barbara Ellen

Spy Game
Odeon West End; 15, 130 mins
Follicly challenging

In his time, the director Tony Scott has been responsible for movies as diverse as Top Gun, True Romance and Enemy of the State. Just as Top Gun took you up into the skies in a cloudburst of beautiful boys and fashionable Ray-Bans, his latest film, Spy Game, could give you narrative jet-lag.

Like Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, it rushes you through countries and political hotspots (China, Berlin, Beirut, Vietnam, America), so fast you’ve barely time to reach for your emotional passport before you’re off again, across borders and continents, on the next leg of the adventure. Fast-paced, sexy, and intense, Spy Game makes the old-fashioned espionage thriller look better, leaner, wittier, more relevant than it has done for many years.

No wonder Robert Redford stands at the centre of it, almost purring with mid-life (OK, near-bus-pass-age) satisfaction. There he is, lines on his face so deep it looks like large crows have been walking all over it, and he still gets projects like this. Not to mention the girl (well, wives, lots of them) and all the best lines.

The movie opens in 1991 amid a dubious fog of clichés. Redford’s character, maverick CIA agent Nathan Muir, is a day away from retiring when he learns that a young agent he recruited and trained (Tom Bishop, played by Brad Pitt) has been caught while out on an unofficial rescue mission, and is now being detained by the Hong Kong authorities on a charge of espionage, punishable by death within 24 hours.

Reluctant to scupper the American Government’s trade with Hong Kong, the CIA makes it clear that it prefers to quietly leave Bishop to his fate. In response, Muir takes them through a series of combat-strewn flashbacks which tell the story of how he met Bishop during the Vietnam War (cue lots of showing off in helicopters), recruited him, trained him and lost him to a Beirut aid worker (Catherine McCormack, reminding you of a young, hot Vanessa Redgrave).

Despite Muir’s protestations (“He’s one of our own”), it becomes clear that he is alone in thinking that Bishop should be saved from incarceration. “Troy,” says Muir cuttingly to a longtime colleague, “do you remember when we could tell the good guys from the bad guys?” Much of the story not told in flashback is based in the CIA headquarters, where Muir stands up to the new guard, represented by a marvellously slimy Stephen Dillane, who is the butt of Muir’s best lines. From the start, Muir is openly contemptuous of the new-style CIA, its disingenuousness, its lack of values (“Are we going to dance all night with your hand on my ass, or are you going to make your move?” he inquires, epigramatically).

Still, Muir gets to have some fun, puncture a few Armani-clad egos, as he goes. When Dillane says: “We need the press on this like we need a third tit,” Muir replies: “You’re using the other two?” By contrast, Redford’s “buddy” scenes with the idealistic Pitt are as tender in feeling as they are sharp of word and bloody in deed. According to Muir, Pitt’s character “starts out trying to see what he’s made of, and ends up not liking the view”, but Pitt takes it deeper than that. In his best turn since Twelve Monkeys, Pitt is innocent but not innocent, managing to keep the boy alive within the man, even as grown-up evil (war, assassination, betrayal) swirls around him.

It’s not all good news. Mysteriously, neither lead seems to age much (in either direction) during their odyssey (could I have some of whatever moisturiser Pitt’s character has apparently been using from Vietnam through to the end of the Cold War?).

Moreover, stylistically, Spy Game is as ripe as a month-old fruit bowl. Scott seems unable to come across an everyday scene without rushing in to jazz it up. Which probably explains the gratuitously tiring visuals: whooshing, zooming elevators, not to mention aerial shots of flash cars, and moody black and white flashes. Most jarringly, every so often, to remind us of Bishop’s plight, the action will freeze and the time clatter up on the screen, banging away like a broken typewriter.

Redford, Pitt bond in ‘Spy Game’

Two CIA agents in travel trunk of ‘special ops’ thriller adventure

by David Elliot

Now that he is in his seriously crinkled phase, Robert Redford has a magisterial ease, an old-fox command of his art that is trim, savvy and satisfying. He makes his best past work seem like preparation. Redford recently carried “The Last Castle,” and is the focus and spine of “Spy Game.” He played a CIA man in 1975’s “Three Days of the Condor,” and now is back at the Agency as deep “op” specialist Nathan Muir, on his day of retirement.

One of the film's minor cheats is to show Muir in the Vietnam of 1975, looking just like today’s Redford plus sideburns. And Brad Pitt looks hardly younger, as a fired-up soldier in the terminus of the war, than he is during the main plot period, 1991.

During the war, Pitt’s Tom Bishop catches Muir’s eye ... Pitt always catches eyes ... then is recruited and trained by him as a CIA field operator. The stars have a hint of senior/junior brothers, and there is a bonded complicity in their acting. Redford directed Pitt to a good performance in “A River Runs Through It,” and as co-star now prods one of Pitt’s most adult performances (but must the Pitt hair still boyishly catch the wind?).

The movie is a sort of CIA travel trunk, plastered with stickers. It goes from 1991 China, where Bishop is a lone wolf in deep trouble, then back to Vietnam, the Berlin Wall era of the ’70s and then ’80s Beirut as urban hell. Much of the action is set at CIA headquarters (Langley, Va.) in ’91, with Muir foxing a room of hard-stare superiors who can’t quite figure what invisible strings he is pulling (their nerves keep yanking).

Although it is doubtful that Muir could get a military “extraction” off the dime and running by personally moving some papers, photos and money, it is fun to go along. He’s a layered man, a true spook. We can see the guilt about some past mistakes that underlies his big, last-day gamble.
       
A DECK OF GOOD ACTORS

The Beirut section is the best. It textures the relationships, shows the often humanly horrible cost of “spy games,” and links Bishop to Catherine McCormack’s shining but not showy Elizabeth, a medical aid worker with a scarred past. The Mideast malaise fits our current anxieties, and there are true touches, including Amidou’s performance as a scared yet dignified doctor invited to murder.

The movie has a deck of good actors, like Stephen Dillane and David Hemmings (the Brad Pitt of 1966 in “Blow-Up”), Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Muir’s girl Friday, Charlotte Rampling as a sort of feminine chandelier of elegance in Berlin. They peg in beautifully.

But the director is Tony “Top Gun” Scott, doing his most textured work here, yet not able to resist a car rip-around that blasts through the standard vegetable cart. Or hosing scenes with music: vintage rock for Vietnam, Vivaldi for Berlin elegance, Arabic wailing for sad Beirut.

Scott seems ready to make anything a commercial (for what, his artistry?). He also, this time, has a viably adult story by Michael Frost Beckner that is expertly cast and given enough complicated momentum to hold us. You may wonder about some plot jumps and anachronisms (let San Diego sports fans figure if Pitt’s “SD” cap is true to the ’80s setting).

“Spy Game” fills its holes entertainingly, and with morsels of humanity.

SPY drama explores friendship

Shadowy espionage trade sheds James Bond image  ***

by Gene Triplett

High-stakes spy versus spy is the game that's afoot in "Spy Game," only it's us against us more than us against them in this taut and entertaining twist on international intrigue.

Clad in what appears to be the same tweed jacket he wore in 1975's "Three Days of the Condor," Robert Redford is charismatic as ever as he again plays a cagey CIA operative caught up in Company housecleaning.  Only this time he's an old dog of the Cold War teaching the cocky young pups in the organization the true meaning of "intelligence."

Screenwriter Michael Frost Beckner, who's done extensive research on the CIA and created the new television series "The Agency," fashions an intricate and fascinating fictional yarn about the relationship between veteran agent Nathan Muir (Redford) and Tom "Boy Scout" Bishop (Brad Pitt), the young master spy he trained.

On the eve of Muir's retirement in 1991, he learns that Bishop has gone rogue and been captured in China, where he is to be executed in 24 hours unless the United States intercedes.  The new agency powers decide not to claim him, fearing an international incident, and Muir, to save his friend, must pit his old-school savvy and wits against the current decision-makers who have professional and political agendas of their own.

There's plenty of rapid-fire action as flashbacks take us from the final days in Vietnam, when Muir first takes Marine sharpshooter Bishop into the fold, through the pair's clandestine adventures in the divided Berlin and violence-ravaged Beirut of the late '70's and '80's.  And then there's a more subtle emotional violence when they meet the radically idealistic woman (Catherine McCormack) who causes a rift between the two men.

Veteran thriller director Tony Scott ("Top Gun," "True Romance") brews a heady and convincing visceral and visual flavor of global chaos in the flashback location scenes, but it's the sharply contrasting sequences in the low-key bureaucratic environs of a CIA headquarters meeting room that provide the most riveting moments.

Redford's Muir puts on a perfect poker face as he fields his superiors' probing questions about Bishop's activities and alliances, and his interplay with a smug and arrogant young administrator named Harker -- played with snaky precision by Stephen Dillane -- is a source of some of the film's most biting humor and keen observation on the nature of professional jealousy and political self-interest versus the "greater good" of the country.

"Spy Game" is also a revealing look at a decidedly un-James Bondian world of intelligence gathering, where an agent's best tools are more likely to be "a stick of gum, a pocket knife and a smile" than a rocket-firing briefcase or a flame-throwing fountain pen.

And at its core, it's a poignant look at friendship and personal patriotism amidst the smoke (and mirrors) of pivotal events that ended an historical era.

SPY GAME 

by Kirk Honeycutt

Hollywood has yet to craft a film version of a John Le Carre novel that does justice to his portrayal of the perverse, methodical game of international espionage. "Spy Game," based not on a Le Carre book but on an original script by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata and given an event-movie aura by a crack team of filmmakers headed by director Tony Scott, nevertheless captures that gray, scary netherworld of spies Le Carre's readers know all too well.

Achieving a satisfying blend of an edge-of-your-seat thriller with a story of friendship and loyalty and a sobering inquiry into what it means to be a spy, "Spy" is a strong effort on everyone's part. It's hard to gauge, though, how the public will react to a tough-minded look at the CIA these days. Here's a movie that puts an American operative on the side of an Arab suicide bomber. Yet in context, the alliance makes sense. Beckner and Arata's script nearly always gives Redford's and Pitt's spies the moral high ground even if further reflection causes you to realize how low that high ground can be.

For a film propelled by events from the first frame, it's amazing how much of the story actually occurs in flashbacks. On the very day in 1991 that Redford's Nathan Muir is to retire from the CIA, he learns that his one-time protege, Pitt's Tom Bishop, is detained in a Chinese prison, where he will be tortured and executed within 24 hours.

The CIA brass reluctantly call Muir in for a taped-and-transcribed session that is part inquiry and part third-degree. (There is little back story on the animosities among the players, which actually works to the film's advantage, for the audience is left to imagine the rivalries and intrigues that have gone into these relationships.) As Muir relates details of his first meeting with Bishop in Vietnam, his recruitment in West Berlin and their high-stakes job and falling-out in Beirut, Lebanon, Muir slips out of the room from time to time to counterplot against his bosses to extricate his former pupil from the Chinese jail.

So the film continually shifts between various time periods, locations and story lines. As Muir teaches Bishop his job, the movie is able to explore the moral trade-offs that must take place. Is the destruction of buildings and the deaths of many people, some undoubtedly innocent, worth the elimination of one terrorist? Can human beings be traded with one another without sacrificing American ideals? Can one live such a life and not get dragged into a quagmire of moral uncertainty?

At Langley, the good cop/bad cop routine is played expertly by Larry Bryggman's Troy Folger and Stephen Dillane's Charles Harker, one an old-school spy and the other a sharp bureaucrat. Slipping Muir information from the outside is an old buddy, David Hemmings' agent in Hong Kong, while his secretary, Marianne Jean-Baptiste's Gladys, carries out various subterfuges.

The fulcrum of the Muir-Bishop split and the reason that Bishop has gone rogue is Catherine McCormack's Elizabeth. An aid worker in Lebanon, Elizabeth initially becomes an "asset" to Bishop only for his mentor to wonder who is playing whom.

The strength of the film lies in the character work by the actors. Everyone is quick off the mark as many plot lines unfold and impressions must be made fast. The actors, especially Redford, Pitt and McCormack, are superb at making the surfaces work well, which is not the same thing as giving superficial performances. By movie's end, you realize we don't know these people that well, which is the point. They are all too good at role playing. Yet, eventually, their characters -- what they stand for and what they won't stand -- shine through: Essentially, these are good people who have bought into the myth that you can operate in a sewer and not pick up a stench.

Cinematographer Dan Mindel moves from sequence to sequence with aerial shots on a kind of fast-forward that achieve a God-like prospective on the characters and their grubby games. Langley has a dark, ominous look; Vietnam, the yellow of old newspapers; Berlin and China, all chilly gray; and Beirut, surprisingly colorful Mediterranean tones.

Christian Wagner's editing keeps the various story lines straight, while Scott's direction has the easy fluidity he achieved in "Crimson Tide" and "Enemy of the State." The superb location work is worthy of note as it is vital to the story's integrity. The filmmakers use Morocco for the Vietnam and Beirut sequences; Budapest, Hungary, for East and West Berlin circa 1975; Oxford, England for the Chinese settings; and London's Shepperton Studios for the inner sanctum of the CIA.

SPY GAME
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures and Beacon Pictures present
a Douglas Wick production
Producers: Douglas Wick, Marc Abraham
Director: Tony Scott
Screenwriter: Michael Frost Beckner, David Arata
Story by: Michael Frost Beckner
Executive producers: Armyan Bernstein, Iain Smith, Thomas Z. Bliss, James W. Skotchdopole
Director of photography: Dan Mindel
Production designer: Norris Spencer
Music: Harry Gregson-Williams
Costume designer: Louise Frogley
Editor: Christian Wagner
Color/stereo
Cast:
Nathan Muir: Robert Redford
Tom Bishop: Brad Pitt
Elizabeth Handley: Catherine McCormack
Charles Harker: Stephen Dillane
Troy Folger: Larry Bryggman
Gladys Jennip: Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Harry Duncan: David Hemmings
Running time -- 121 minutes
MPAA rating: R

SPY GAME 

by Todd McCarthy

A Universal release of a Universal Pictures and Beacon Pictures presentation of a Douglas Wick production. Produced by Wick, Marc Abraham. Executive producers, Armyan Bernstein, Iain Smith, Thomas A. Bliss, James W. Skotchdopole.
Directed by Tony Scott. Screenplay, Michael Frost Beckner, David Arata, story by Beckner.

Nathan Muir - Robert Redford
Tom Bishop - Brad Pitt
Elizabeth Hadley - Catherine McCormack
Charles Harker - Stephen Dillane
Troy Folger - Larry Bryggman
Vincent Vy Ngo - Michael Paul Chan
Gladys Jennip - Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Li - Ken Leung
Harry Duncan - David Hemmings
Dr. Byars - Matthew Marsh
Robert Aiken - Todd Boyce
The Sheik's Doctor - Amidou
Anne Cathcart - Charlotte Rampling
 
A vehicle for two glamour boys though it is, "Spy Game" serves up a judicious blend of showy action, political intrigue, ticking-clock suspense and intramural CIA one-upsmanship for mainstream entertainment. Globe-trotting like the most fondly remembered espionage thrillers of old, this selective survey of agency activities from the mid-'70s through the early '90s as seen through a mentor-protege relationship has been machine-tooled to a fare-thee-well by director Tony Scott and his team. Snazzy filmmaking, topical relevance of CIA and Middle Eastern issues and star pairing, which produces Robert Redford's most engaging performance in years, should spur solid biz Stateside and perhaps better overseas.

Among other things, this Universal release plays like a companion piece to Redford's 1975 starrer "Three Days of the Condor," in which he played a low-level CIA man who knew too much. This time out, the now more rugged-looking thesp plays 30-year agency vet Nathan Muir who, on the day in 1991 that he's hanging up his spurs, learns that his former recruit and partner Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) is in big trouble in China, with just a day to live before being executed for having been caught trying to sneak someone out of the country.

With a presidential visit to Beijing scheduled in a week, the CIA, anxious to avoid embarrassing publicity, appears ready to sacrifice Bishop for his rogue operation. Or so it seems to Muir, who gets to spend his final day on the job being grilled by superiors about his relationship with their wayward agent. One might think that, after so long on the job, Muir would be a secure member of the old boys' network but, no, to the younger execs he's suspiciously old school, and a bit impudent to boot.

Much of the film's fun, in fact, lies in the myriad ways Muir outwits his questioners, who are just looking for reasons to wash their hands of Bishop. As Muir tells his helpful assistant Gladys (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Noah knew to build the ark before it rained, and much of Muir's success, both in the field and the office, comes from his well-learned practice of keeping one step ahead of everyone else.

The brightly written interrogation sessions trigger the yarn's three increasingly potent flashbacks. Initial flashback recounts how Muir, in Da Nang, Vietnam, in 1975, engaged sharp-shooting soldier Bishop to assassinate a Vietcong officer. In West Berlin the following year, Muir is seen officially recruiting the California kid for the CIA; as Muir expected, Bishop quickly proves himself a natural, his resourceful spontaneity being perfect for the job.

It's in Berlin, however, that the younger man learns of the often-tragic human consequences of the spy game. Furious over having been ordered at the last second to abandon a man he was trying to bring over from the East, and thereby condemning him to certain death, Bishop gets a stern lecture from Muir about real politik and the greater good.

As Muir tells the tale of his friend, intricate games are being played at agency h.q.; agents ransack Muir's office for files he might have hidden, Muir sneaks into colleagues' quarters to make secret overseas calls about Bishop's status and uses subterfuge to obtain classified documents and photographs. This is high-stakes office politics, made increasingly amusing as he stays well past normal hours applying his masterly manipulative skills to this emergency at a time when he should be off celebrating his retirement.

Third and most significant flashback lands the action in 1985 Beirut, where Muir and Bishop are re-teamed to take out a major sponsor of terrorism. Interlude is very absorbing strictly on its own terms as it deftly illustrates the setting up of the hit -- deciding how it will be done, making the critical contacts, maintaining surveillance of the target as he arrives via speedboat from Cyprus and then lurks around town. Also strongly evoked are the refugee camps and medical centers where Bishop meets Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormack), a British do-gooder aid worker of whom Muir is immediately suspicious.

And then there are the inevitable eerie echoes of more recent events, as the episode's climactic action involves a suicide bomber and a building that completely collapses upon detonation. Sequence is powerful and sobering, but very acceptable and appropriate in context. Dramatically, the incident, coupled with Muir's exposure of Elizabeth's true affiliations and background, sends Bishop off the deep end, finishing the relationship between the two men.

Unlike "Condor," which reflected the fashionably anti-establishment paranoia of the period, the script by Michael Frost Beckner, creator of the hot-button TV series "The Agency," and David Arata ("Brokedown Palace") is not fundamentally anti-CIA per se; Muir, whose point of view defines the picture's stance, has dedicated his entire life to the agency for a reason, one he feels adamant about. On the other hand, no one knows the "game" better than Muir; he never relinquishes his right to think for himself and does so when the agency is up to no good, as in the case of Bishop. Resolution to the framing 1991 story is effected by a gesture of rule-breaking independence driven by an impulse that underlines Muir's dedication to loyalty and additionally suggests that the battle-hardened veteran might be a closet romantic at heart.

Redford's role seems tailor-made for him in the way that many of his major starring parts of the '70s and '80s were designed to maximize his assets. As such, his Muir is smart, skeptical, a bit of a smart-ass at times, competent without being a show-off, and off-handedly attractive. Despite having hit his mid-60s, Redford's star luster is undiminished, and with his hair and sideburns appearing somewhat longer, he actually looks younger in the '70s-set flashbacks.

With considerably less screen time and no depth written into his character, Pitt can't take Bishop beyond one dimension and so must settle for making him look brash, dashing and increasingly burdened by the gravity of his work. A potentially profitable area the script entirely neglects is Muir's personal interest in Bishop: Does he see a young version of himself in kid, is he trying to shape him in his own image, and what does he think about the fact that they look so much alike?

Supporting actors are mainly cast for their faces and the attitudes they can quickly convey. Most crucially, given their significant time on-camera, Stephen Dillane, as Muir's chief agency adversary, and Larry Bryggman, as a more sympathetic inquisitor, register extremely well.

Notes