Entrapment

If countdowns alone could ensure suspense, Entrapment would be the best thriller since the heyday of Hitchcock, whose To Catch a Thief this bloated Jon Amiel potboiler vainly tries to emulate. From explosive devices to the millennium, the film spends so much time counting backward toward fizzled climaxes it begins to seem like a mental disorder. Lost in a tortured screenplay that makes Mission: Impossible seem a model of clarity is an avuncularly elegant performance by Sean Connery as MacDougal, a legendary art thief suspected in a recent Rembrandt theft. Insurance investigator Gin Baker, played with zest by Catherine Zeta-Jones as a kind of anti-Grace Kelly, wants to entice him into joining her in another heist of an invaluable gold Chinese mask, and much of Entrapment involves their earnest preparations and perfunctory flirtations (their relationship is summed up when her butt slithers under a laser beam and Connery grunts nostalgically). Why they just don't bag MacDougal with the goods in the beginning is never explained, though the idea is probably to allow more screen time for a hilarious Maury Chaykin as a weird Malaysian Buddha, plus, yes, one more countdown to little payoff. At the Harbour Mall, Opera House, Showcase, Tri-Boro, and Woonsocket cinemas.
-- Peter Keough