On the surface, "Company Business" must have seemed like a dream project — a spy thriller written and directed by Nicholas Meyer, starring Gene Hackman and Mikhail Baryshnikov as an odd-couple pair of spies.
Hackman, of course, is one of the great actors of our time, and Baryshnikov, the dancer-turned-actor, has a huge following.
And Meyer is the writer-director of "Time After Time"; was Oscar-nominated as the screenwriter of "The Seven Per-Cent Solution" (based on his own novel); and has been a guiding hand behind the two best "Star Trek" movies, "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Voyage Home." (He is also co-writer/di-rector of the upcoming "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.")
But, alas, "Company Business" lacks the panache or clever plotting that Meyer has often shown in his work.
And despite their engaging efforts, Hackman and Baryshnikov are able to bring the proceedings to life only occasionally.
As the film opens, Hackman is a retired CIA agent now reduced to making a living through industrial espionage. He is called back to duty to deliver an imprisoned Russian spy (Baryshnikov) to East Berlin for a prisoner exchange. He's also carrying $2 million in Colombian drug money.
But when something goes wrong, Hackman and Baryshnikov find themselves reluctantly working together just to stay alive.
At first they trust the CIA bosses Hackman answers to, but soon it becomes apparent that no one is to be trusted. And as the film progresses, the CIA and KGB begin working together to bring them down.
It's a stale situation, of course, done, redone and overdone in dozens of other movies, and Meyer doesn't breathe enough life into it, despite a fair amount of humor (mostly at the expense of political name-dropping) and a few — perhaps too few — action sequences.
Even the use of the Eiffel Tower for a Hitchcock-style climax never really takes off, and the film's ending is abrupt and flat.
Meyer doesn't seem to have much passion for his characters, which, of course, makes it hard for us to feel any. And Hackman and Baryshnikov exhibit little antagonism toward each other — they're quite friendly from the start — so there's never any real tension between them, no sense of danger.
Still, it must be said that the two actors do work well together and keep up audience interest with effortless charm.
As villains, two fine character actors — Kurtwood Smith ("Robo-Cop") and Terry O'Quinn ("The Stepfather") do well with what they have, but neither role is very well defined.
And it does seem odd that the high-ranking military chief behind all the corruption gets very little screen time — and, in the end, little or no comeuppance.
Meyer's direction is more compelling than his script, which is riddled with holes and setups that strangely lack satisfying payoffs.
It's as if he's relying entirely on his stars to carry it all off.
They almost do.
"Company Business" is rated PG-13 for violence and profanity, as well as some brief partial nudity and discreet sex.