Even actor Ben Kingsley cannot salvage this John Le Carré wannabe thriller "Spider in the Web." The main problem is the talky nature of what should be an action picture inspired by true events.
The gist of the film is the Mossad operation to locate evidence of a chemical plant used to manufacture horrific weapons of mass destruction to be used in Syria by the Assad regime. But the film is vague on the details of such an operation, and the best it can dredge up is some shaky photographic evidence.
Kingsley's character Avram Adereth teams up with a young partner named Daniel, who is the son of one of Adereth's closest friends and career spies. Adereth takes Daniel under his wing, and the two characters play a dangerous double game to locate the so-called Spider in the Web file that will be the "smoking gun" for the evidence of the chemical plants.
There is also a love interest in Adereth's passion for Dr. Angela Caroni, who claims to be an environmental activist. Angela becomes involved in the high-risk operation to steal the computer file Spider in the Web. Angela has perhaps the best line in the film when she tells Adereth, "You make love just the way you live life: in despair."
The main problem with the film was the overly complicated narrative strands and the static nature of the scenes. There is too much filler dialogue and too many long set speeches with Adereth waxing nostalgic about the past. Most of the action was occurring in the Netherlands, where the secrets about the chemical operation were allegedly located.
The film opens with an epigram from Psalms, "Man is like a breath. His days are but a fleeting shadow." But far too much breath was expended in this slow-burner with too many secondary characters and convoluted subplots, the most disgusting of which was the poisoning of fish on the beaches of Antwerp. This was a flat and uninspired film that, in the end, did not shed any significant light on the main topic of chemical weapons and contemporary Syria.
The gist of the film is the Mossad operation to locate evidence of a chemical plant used to manufacture horrific weapons of mass destruction to be used in Syria by the Assad regime. But the film is vague on the details of such an operation, and the best it can dredge up is some shaky photographic evidence.
Kingsley's character Avram Adereth teams up with a young partner named Daniel, who is the son of one of Adereth's closest friends and career spies. Adereth takes Daniel under his wing, and the two characters play a dangerous double game to locate the so-called Spider in the Web file that will be the "smoking gun" for the evidence of the chemical plants.
There is also a love interest in Adereth's passion for Dr. Angela Caroni, who claims to be an environmental activist. Angela becomes involved in the high-risk operation to steal the computer file Spider in the Web. Angela has perhaps the best line in the film when she tells Adereth, "You make love just the way you live life: in despair."
The main problem with the film was the overly complicated narrative strands and the static nature of the scenes. There is too much filler dialogue and too many long set speeches with Adereth waxing nostalgic about the past. Most of the action was occurring in the Netherlands, where the secrets about the chemical operation were allegedly located.
The film opens with an epigram from Psalms, "Man is like a breath. His days are but a fleeting shadow." But far too much breath was expended in this slow-burner with too many secondary characters and convoluted subplots, the most disgusting of which was the poisoning of fish on the beaches of Antwerp. This was a flat and uninspired film that, in the end, did not shed any significant light on the main topic of chemical weapons and contemporary Syria.