Company Business

Directed by Nicholas Meyer, Company Business follows a retired CIA operative (Gene Hackman’s Sam Boyd) as he’s drawn back into the fray after agreeing to accompany a KGB mole (Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Grushenko) to a prisoner exchange. It’s a solid setup that’s employed as a springboard for a mostly underwhelming (and distressingly tedious) misfire, as Meyer, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a sluggish endeavor that takes forever to get going and generally suffers from a lack of forward momentum – with the arms-length vibe compounded by a recurring emphasis on far-from-enthralling subplots and digressions. And while the picture admittedly benefits from the solid chemistry between Hackman and Baryshnikov’s respective characters, as well as the efforts of such first-class periphery performers as Kurtwood Smith and Terry O’Quinn, Company Business builds towards an oddly uninvolving (and thoroughly anticlimactic) Eiffel Tower-set finale that ensures the whole thing concludes on about as lackluster a note as one could envision.

** out of ****