Before I went to watch Entrapment last weekend, I had seen several reviews that lambasted the movie's disjointed script, poor directing, etc, etc. So I was thinking, "Just how bad could a movie starring Sean Connery (The Hunt For Red October, Rising Sun, The Rock, Dragonheart) and Catherine Zeta-Jones (The Mask Of Zorro) be?". The answer: not too bad. Especially as about half of the movie was filmed in Malaysia. So I guess Malaysian audiences would get a kick out of seeing familiar Malaysian places such as the Petronas Twin Towers in a major Hollywood production. There's also the hilarity of seeing the Bukit Jalil LRT station suddenly become the Pudu LRT station.

Entrapment, directed by Jon Amiel (Copycat, Sommersby) and co-produced by Sean Connery himself, was shot on location in New York, London, Scotland and Malaysia. It also stars Will Patton and Ving Rhames. The screenplay is by Ron Bass and William Broyles, based upon a story by Ron Bass and Michael Hertzberg.

In Entrapment, Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Virginia 'Gin' Baker, a New York insurance investigator who's out to capture Robert 'Mac' McDougal (Sean Connery), an infamous thief. After the theft of a priceless painting, she's convinced McDougal is behind it and persuades her boss Hector Cruz (Will Patton) to let her go undercover in order to apprehend McDougal and recover the painting. Thus she meets McDougal in London and together they form a partnership for several theft jobs. Ving Rhames plays Thibadeaux, McDougal's secret partner in crime and the supplier of the theft equipment needed.

The movie starts out nicely enough, with a workmanlike burglary scene done with precision and finesse. From then on, the plot fizzles. (I hate to say this, but the critics were right about the poor quality of the script.) The story is so predictable, with McDougal taking on Gin as an apprentice and giving her training in the art of thieving. (Here, the male audience gets their chance to admire and ogle at the luscious and drop-dead gorgeous curves of Zeta-Jones's body as she learns to move past security laser beams.) Then they go on a caper to steal a valuable Chinese mask from a Scottish castle.

Finally, they arrive in Malaysia (the part which Malaysian audiences would be waiting for) to take on a job in the Petronas Twin Towers. Here, they rent a shoplot apartment (couldn't they just rent a hotel room?) in what is probably the Chow Kit area with a great view of the Petronas Twin Towers. Here Zeta-Jones does her part in promoting tourism in Malaysia as she opens the window and tells Connery (and thus the whole world)," I give you the world's tallest building (meaning the Petronas Twin Towers)." And inevitably, Gin finds herself attracted to McDougal and vice versa.

Despite the script, Entrapment does have its moments of thrills and suspense. There's the scene of Connery and Zeta-Jones literally trying to hang on to their lives on the skybridge connecting the Twin Towers and also several suspenseful moments when they try to steal the Chinese Mask from the Scottish castle. Also, the view from high up the Twin Towers are breathtaking, to say the least. However, there's another scene which really bugs me. Here, Zeta-Jones is manhandled right in the wet market with the Malaysian public surrounding her and the locals either pretended not to notice or just didn't care. Come on! Are Malaysians people who look the other way when there's trouble?

Well, I guess the important thing for the producers is the box-office, right? And currently, Entrapment has earned around $40 million in its third week at the U.S. box-office, which is a nice performance. Overall, Entrapment is still a movie which provides enough excitement, thrills and suspense despite the bad script and should draw the Malaysian audience to the cinemas