I Spy
All team (102)
Short description
A prototype stealth aircraft has been stolen from the United States government and is now in the hands of Arnold Gundars, an arms dealer who intends to sell it to the highest bidder. Alex Scott, a top American spy, is assigned to recover it. His partner on the mission is Kelly Robinson, a world boxing champion with no intelligence training and no shortage of confidence. The two men dislike each other from the start, and a planned bout in Budapest serves as cover for their attempts to get close to Gundars and locate the plane before the deal goes through.
Betty Thomas directed the film, her fifth feature after The Brady Bunch Movie, Private Parts, Doctor Dolittle and 28 Days, working from a screenplay by Cormac and Marianne Wibberley with David Ronn. Eddie Murphy plays Kelly Robinson and Owen Wilson plays Alex Scott, with Famke Janssen, Malcolm McDowell and Gary Cole among the supporting cast. The production was mounted on a budget of 70 million USD and returned roughly 51 million USD worldwide.
The film met with a poor reception. On IMDb it holds 5.4/10 from around 55,000 votes and on TMDB 5.4/10 from just over a thousand votes, while the critics' rating stands lower at 4.3/10 from 134 reviews. It draws on the television series of the same name, though its two leads are cast in a comic spy-versus-boxer pairing rather than the original setup.
What's left behind the scenes
- At the director Betty Thomas' request, British actor and stuntman Darren Shalavi (1972-2015) lost almost 14 kg to appear in the same weight class as Eddie Murphy in the ring scenes.
- The filmmakers managed to obtain permission to film at Buda Castle, which resulted in unforeseen difficulties. Beneath the castle is an extensive network of tunnels and dungeons, so delivering heavy equipment to the filming location posed a risk of collapse of the ancient underground structures' vaults.
- It proved very difficult to film the car chase scene on the narrow road towards the Danube. The street had to be closed to the public and illuminated. Cinematographer Oliver Wood had to travel to Germany and rent a dozen huge spotlights there, which were placed on cranes installed on both banks of the river for filming.
- Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson performed some of the stunts themselves, while for the rest they invited several experienced stunt performers from the USA and hired another 18 Hungarian stuntmen. The language barrier became a problem. Each stunt had to be explained to the stunt performers many times to avoid mistakes.
- City authorities did not grant the filmmakers permission to shoot the final scene on the bridge over the Danube, so the bridge was created using digital technology.
- Some scenes of the film were shot in Vancouver, Canada.
- Filming began on September 12, 2001, in Budapest, Hungary. Producer Andrew J. Vajna decided that, like the series "I Spy" (1965), which this film was a remake of, the action of this adaptation should take place in "exotic locations".
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