plot explanation - What did Muir think was going to happen after he left McLean?

At the end of Spy Game, Nathan Muir is seen driving away from CIA headquarters; my impression of the scene is that he's in a hurry. He peels away from the gate, and the next shot of him is driving his Porsche along an open country road -- it seems to be implied that he's going fast.

Over the past day, he's committed at least two crimes (bribery of a foreign official, forgery) and several acts that, if not technically illegal, are likely to get him into very serious trouble if for no other reason than that they have pissed off high-ranking CIA officials.

Is he supposed to be escaping? Does he seriously think he can outrun the CIA (à la Hopscotch) with no money? Or does he anticipate no real personal consequences, hoping they'll realize he ultimately did the right thing? This seems like an oversight. What is Muir up to after he leaves?

Answer

Let's look at the options the CIA got:

• Pursue him legally. Although he has certainly broken the law with his actions, the CIA cannot just admit that they got deceived by a single employee who invaded a (quasi) enemy country with a marine team just to enforce his own private goals. That would be quite embarrassing. I don't think the few bosses from the conference room can even tell it to the rest of the CIA.




• Secretly punish him financially. They are surely able to do this, but what should they take, since he lost his whole money for this job. On the other hand the government didn't lose any money.




• Secretly kill him. They won't do him any physical damage, they're just not the bunch of cliché evil-guys killing people for fun and are not depicted in that way in the movie either.




• Secretly imprison him. They could certainly do that, but again, they would have to keep this entirely secret, since as few people as possible outside of this small conference room should know about Muir's actions. Additionally I'm not sure if imprisoning him would really buy them anything.

So considering the fact that they cannot tell anybody, not even the rest of the government or the CIA, what Muir did, and the fact that Muir used his own money and is just a poor old man now, from a pragmatic point of view they neither have many possibilities to punish him nor a large motivation to do so. They may certainly observe him in order to get sure he doesn't talk about what he did, but why should he do so.

But in the end I'm not that sure the script writers really thought about this that largely. Usually the audience just doesn't think outside of the movie's limited time frame. Think of the mandatory romance in your favourite action or adventure movie, of course they will split afterwards since they just don't fit together, but they have to kiss at the end. In the same way Muir just has to drive away from the CIA in the last moment, no matter if they know where he lives and what he's done.