"Entrapment" on DVD

Stylish Heist flick

Sean Connery is teamed with Catherine Zeta-Jones in this 20th Century Fox yarn in which you're never too sure who's good, who's bad, and who's working for - and against - whom.

The film starts out like a 1990's version of the old American TV show "Banacek," with Zeta-Jones is an insurance investigator tracking the theft of a priceless Rembrandt painting. The evidence, she tells her supervisor, points to famed master thief Connery, and she gets assigned to seek him out and entrap him with the lure of a $40 million ancient Chinese mask.

She gains Connery's confidence and together they plan and rehearse the supposedly impossible theft of the mask from its ultra-secure display case. It's a fascinating look at high tech security and the low-and-high tech ways it can be subverted. You never really think they won't pull it off - and they do - but it turns out the theft is merely the opening act for a heist even more difficult, audacious - and lucrative.

The film builds its suspense well and concludes with a wonderful plot twist. Connery and Zeta-Jones are both good in their parts, and have appropriate onscreen chemistry. In all, it's a fine story that never gets bogged down and has a fairly satisfying conclusion.

The widescreen DVD is Dolby 5.1 surround and audio/video quality are excellent. Extras are very sparse, just the theatrical trailer and one for "Rising Sun," along with chapter stops, and a list of major cast members (with no supporting info). We wish companies would put as much effort into real extras as they do these annoying "interactive menus" that are distracting and slow to operate.

No, that isn't true. We wish the studios would forget about these clever but useless menus and give us more meat instead.

Still, as a DVD movie, "Entrapment" works very well, and that's really the bottom line. Everything else on DVD's is gravy.

It's just that we get so much gravy on many discs that it leaves us feeling that the more ordinary discs lack a bit of seasoning.

Entrapment, from 20th Century Fox Home Video
113 minutes, Widescreen (2.35:1), Dolby Digital
Starring Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Will Patton, Maury Chaykin and Ving Rhames
Produced by Sean Connery, Michael Hertzberg, Rhonda Tollefson, Story by Ron Bass and Michael Hertzberg, Screenplay by Ron Bass and William Broyles
Directed by Jon Amiel

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