i have no real tangible proof of this , but i swear that there are a lot of producers in hollywood who adamantly believe that if you take a bad script , written by a bad writer and give the project it to an equally bad director , then it is actually possible to make a good movie . 
using their logic , all that really needs be done to change the bad movie into a good movie is cast a bunch of super-famous actors and provide an almost unlimited production budget . 
this is the only way i can fathom how 20th century fox hired jon amiel in order to direct this eighty million dollar waste of my time ( not counting the time it took me to get to and from the theatre ) . 
now , before i continue to ferociously attack what's wrong with this film , i just want to point out that one of the reasons it fails so miserably is because it does have the potential to be an exciting thriller . 
catherine zeta-jones plays virginia baker , an insurance investigator tracking down an infamous art thief named robert macdougal ( sean connery ) . 
if you've ever seen any hollywood blockbuster before , i really don't have to spend too much time on frivolous plot details : the two team up for various jobs , stealing various things for various purposes . 
the problem we come to is that we've all seen this a few billion times before and this film doesn't break any new ground in the big-budget/hollywood/action genre . 
the result is that the entire production feels contrived . 
i'm going to be completely honest here : pretty much the only thing keeping me awake throughout the run-time was looking at catherine zeta-jones . 
now while this may be a compliment for ms . zeta-jones , it certainly isn't for either the writers or the director , who are not nearly as clever as they think they are . 
just about the most profound thought they can inject into this film is when they have macdougal lecture baker on the semantic difference between " entrapment " and " blackmail " . 
with an eighty million dollar budget , you'd think that entrapment would at least feature edge-of-your seat action scenes or breathtaking special f/x . 
well , you'd be wrong . 
the action that is present in this film takes place in a huge skyscraper and is relatively unspectacular . 
unfortunately for all those involved with entrapment , die hard narrowly beat it to the screen by ? 11 years . 
the reality is that after 15 minutes of watching this picture , you know exactly what's going to happen , despite rather pathetic attempts in the screenplay to throw in plot twists . 
many scenes seem to exist merely as a reason to outfit zeta-jones in extremely tight-fitting clothing . 
one particular scene features baker crawling around trying to avoid laser-beams while she tries to steal an ancient chinese mask . 
nothing wrong with that , but she entered the room from the floor and knew exactly where the mask was - so why didn't she and macdougal tunnel in directly under the mask instead of the other side of the room ? 
i'll tell you why : because it's a great excuse to photograph zeta-jones' posterior as it slides underneath those beams ( and it also allows a second scene of the exact same thing - the rehearsal ) . 
ving rhames also makes an appearance in this movie , and though he has great screen presence ( although so do connery and zeta-jones ) and the most interesting character in the film , not even he can rescue this film from the depths of the boring film abyss ( a concept i invented just to describe this picture ) . 
one last complaint : entrapment is littered of instances where macdougal will just slip into a shadow or behind a building , or he becomes obstructed by a moving vehicle and then in the next shot , he'll spontaneously disappear in ninja-like fashion . 
i can picture amiel patting himself on the back , thinking to himself " it'll leave the audience wondering for days : how did he do that ? " 
we know jon , it's called editing . 
