Fair Game movie storyline. Kathryn “Kate” McQuean (Cindy Crawford) is a Miami lawyer who, in the course of a divorce proceeding, attempts to seize a 157-foot freighter docked off the Florida coast in lieu of unpaid alimony.
The freighter which is owned by criminal Emilio Juantorena (Miguel Sandoval), is the current base of operations of Ilya Pavel Kazak (Steven Berkoff), a former KGB agent who has become an international money laundering expert, and he has also become the leader of a group of rogue KGB members, including Stefan (Gustav Vintas), Leonide “Hacker” Volkov (Paul Dillon), Navigator (Marc Macaulay), Rosa (Jenette Goldstein) and Zhukov (Olek Krupa).
When Kate is unintentionally hit by a stray bullet, Miami detective Max Kirkpatrick (William Baldwin) is assigned to the case. Then an attempt is made on Kate’s life by Kazak, who—after killing Juantorena—assembles his team into tracking and killing Kate. Max becomes her protector, as it turns out that Kazak wants Kate dead. Kate, Max, and two of his colleagues stay at a hotel. They order pizza, but Volkov, however, traces the order and Rosa and two henchmen infiltrate the hotel and kill Max’s colleagues.
Fair Game is a 1995 American action film directed by Andrew Sipes. It stars Cindy Crawford as family law attorney Kate McQuean and William Baldwin as Max Kirkpatrick, a Florida police officer. Kirkpatrick ends up on the run to protect McQuean when she is targeted for murder by ex-members of the KGB with interests in a ship owned by a Cuban man who may lose it in a divorce case being pursued by McQuean.
Film Review for Fair Game
And it’s strike one against Cindy Crawford, who is glaringly miscast as a lawyer named Kate McQuean in “Fair Game,” her Hollywood film debut. The lustrous supermodel may yet salvage her fledgling movie career. But it won’t be by portraying characters who have to spout professional jargon, unless it is the sort of chattery girl talk that Ms. Crawford already dispenses on television.
The star’s matter-of-fact coolness, which works to her advantage on television by giving her an aura of neighborly casualness, backfires on the big screen, where it makes her seem smaller than life. Ms. Crawford is stunning to look at, but her deep-set eyes render her expression forever inscrutable. From certain camera angles, her face in repose projects the kind of sullen pugnacity associated with Jane Russell. But where Miss Russell had a vocal growl to match this hint of toughness, Ms. Crawford, even when throwing a snit, fumes in the bland, clipped cadences of an ambitious beauty contestant who doesn’t want to smear her makeup.
The film, written by Charlie Fletcher (based on a novel by Paula Gosling) and directed by Andrew Sipes, is one long explosion-riddled chase. Kate is joined in her flight from a gang of ex-K.G.B. assassins by Max Kirkpatrick (William Baldwin), a Dade County, Fla., homicide detective. Unflappable against odds that would make even James Bond think twice, Mr. Baldwin moves from action sequence to action sequence with a graceful efficiency, registering just enough amusement to suggest that this is a piece of cake.
Naturally, the action pauses long enough for Kate and Max to fall for each other. While aboard a freight train, an incipient fistfight suddenly melts into a clinch. But the actors’ carefully posed embraces generate few sparks.
The only heat that rises from the movie is mechanical. The pair’s pursuers are technological wizards equipped with heat sensors and decoding devices that enable them to track their prey via satellite. The movie is a skillful exercise in a cinematic style that might be called the “Miami glide.”
Filmed in south Florida, it is a seamlessly photographed and edited joy ride that for all its jolts and hair’s-breadth escapes is more lulling than invigorating. And the pyrotechnics are impeccable. The film’s three richly billowing explosions are spaced at optimal intervals. As for the plot, don’t ask. Suffice it to say that in settling on former members of the K.G.B. as arch-villains, Hollywood is facing a serious bad-guy shortage.
Fair Game (1995)
Directed by: Andrew Sipes
Starring: William Baldwin, Cindy Crawford, Steven Berkoff, Salma Hayek, Christopher McDonald, Miguel Sandoval, Jenette Goldstein, Marc Macaulay, Frank Medrano
Screenplay by: Charlie Fletcher
Production Design by: James H. Spencer
Cinematography by: Richard Bowen
Film Editing by: David Finfer, Steven Kemper, Christian Wagner
Costume Design by: Louise Frogley
Set Decoration by: Don K. Ivey
Art Direction by: William F. Matthews
Music by: Mark Mancina
MPAA Rating: R for intermittent strong violence, language and a scene of sexuality.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: November 3, 1995
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