The Code

The Code casts Morgan Freeman as Keith Ripley, an aging thief who teams up with a hotshot criminal (Antonio Banderas’ Gabriel Martin) to pull off the most lucrative job of his career – though the pair ultimately find themselves confronted with a whole host of obstacles, with Martin’s fledgling relationship with Ripley’s goddaughter (Radha Mitchell’s Alexandra Korolenko) inevitably causing friction between the two men. The Code marks the latest in an increasingly long line of middling thrillers starring Freeman, as the actor has recently appeared in such utterly forgettable titles as 2005’s Edison and 2006’s The Contract. And while The Code may not be quite as relentlessly mediocre as either of those films – it takes real talent to transform a heist flick into a flat-out unwatchable piece of work – the movie is nevertheless unable to hold the viewer’s interest with any degree of consistency. The inclusion of several less-than-enthralling subplots, especially Martin’s on-again-off-again relationship with Mitchell’s character, proves effective at dampening the strength of The Code’s few overtly positive attributes, while the impossibly convoluted third act ensures that the movie ends on as underwhelming a note as one could possibly envision. Despite its myriad of questionable elements, however, The Code is undoubtedly worth a look for the impressive heist sequence that arrives at its mid-point. Director Mimi Leder does a fantastic job of transforming what could have been a run-of-the-mill interlude into an admittedly engrossing (and surprisingly suspenseful) 20-minute stretch of film, with its effectiveness ultimately ensuring that virtually everything that comes after it can’t help but come off as anti-climactic. The end result is a hopelessly uneven endeavor that’s consistently buoyed by Freeman’s mere presence, yet there’s little doubt that the actor deserves so, so much better than this.

**1/2 out of ****