The Chase Is On to Catch a Crafty Thief

“Entrapment” is meant to be a glitzy bauble, but it hasn’t been polished to a truly high sheen. While the film glistens a bit now and again, a closer look reveals you’ve been diverted not by a diamond but by a genuine synthetic zircon.

A glib caper thriller that echoes so many of its predecessors (“Rififi,” “Topkapi,” “To Catch a Thief,” “The Thomas Crown Affair”) that director Jon Amiel must have heard footsteps every time he approached the camera, “Entrapment” is both helped and hampered by a star pairing that looked ideal on paper but plays iffy on screen.

Yes, together again for the first time, it’s Sean Connery, the man you’ve loved for, well, decades, and one of the most beautiful women of the moment, “The Mask of Zorro’s” Catherine Zeta-Jones, who wasn’t even alive when Connery first became a star. Strong cases can be made for each of them individually, but put them together in a romantic scenario and their 40-year age difference leads to a situation that some people are calling “Grampy Kissing the Girl.”

“Entrapment” opens, like the James Bond pictures Connery starred in long ago, with an elaborate physical stunt. It’s the theft, by a single masked and daring cat burglar, of a multimillion-dollar Rembrandt from an elaborately guarded Manhattan office 70 stories off the ground.

Which is where Virginia “Gin” Baker (Zeta-Jones) comes in. An insurance investigator who specializes in high-end thefts, Gin tells boss Hector Cruz (Will Patton) that she’s convinced the culprit is Robert “Mac” MacDougal (Connery), a legendary pilferer who may or may not be retired.

Offering herself and a priceless Chinese mask as bait, Gin poses as a thief and goes to Europe with the hope of trapping Mac. He and Gin connect and while they make elaborate plans to lift the object, there’s talk of an even bigger score in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur that comes to involve shadowy henchpersons Thibadeaux (an underutilized Ving Rhames) and Conrad Green (an out-of-control Maury Chaykin).

But the old man didn’t get to be at the top of his game by being easily fooled, and duplicity turns out to be second nature to both of these folks. While they seem to find each other attractive, Mac’s rule about nothing personal going on between partners keeps them warily apart, at least initially.

Director Amiel (“Sommersby”) is reasonably good at the mechanics of the film’s frequent action sequences. But satisfactorily modernizing traditional material is trickier than it seems, and “Entrapment” is not as much fun as, for instance, Martin Campbell’s recent “The Mask of Zorro.”

Part of the reason is that “Entrapment’s” Ron Bass and William Broyles script, while it has designs on being clever and witty, is not as light on its feet as it imagines it is. The film does deliver some unexpected plot moves, but the repartee between Mac and Gin is uninspired, and the considerable stretch that Mac spends being a stern taskmaster to Gin is not particularly enthralling.

The film’s acting is similarly haphazard. Connery has understandably been a major presence for forever and even when he’s in a phoning-it-in mode, he has enough charm to create an acceptable amount of interest.

And while Zeta-Jones was used to better effect in “Zorro,” she is inescapably radiant and that counts for something. When Gin answers in the negative when Mac inquires, “Has there been anyone you couldn’t manipulate, beguile or seduce?,” you know she’s not just bragging.

But that pesky and persistent age difference makes it difficult to connect with Zeta-Jones and Connery as a putative romantic couple. As a result, “Entrapment” traps no one, and by the time some of the script’s better twists kick in, we are well past caring.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for some language, sensuality and drug content. Times guidelines: It’s all more or less genteel.

‘Entrapment’

Sean Connery: Mac MacDougal

Catherine Zeta-Jones: Gin Baker

Will Paton: Hector Cruz

Maury Chaykin: Conrad Greene

Ving Rhames: Thibadeaux

Regency Enterprises presents a Fountainbridge Films and a Michael Hertzberg production, released by 20th Century Fox. Director Jon Amiel. Producers Sean Connery, Michael Hertzberg, Rhonda Tollefson. Executive producers Iain Smith, Ron Bass, Arnon Milchan. Screenplay Ron Bass and William Broyles. Story Ron Bass and Michael Hertzberg. Cinematographer Phil Meheux. Editor Terry Rawlings. Costumes Penny Rose. Music Christopher Young. Production design Norman Garwood. Supervising art director Jim Morahan. Set decorator Anna Pinnock. Running time: 2 hours, 1 minute.

In general release throughout Southern California.