Movie Review -- Bad Company (2002)


by Ugur Akinci - Date: 2007-03-02 - Word Count: 428 Share This!

Bad Company (2002) is Bad News because it is not a project that Sir Anthony Hopkins should have taken part in. Period.

Then the question is -- why? Why did Hopkins lent his good name to a trivial exercise like this?

The answer is "money," I suppose... but it's sad to see such talent wasted on this flimsy excuse of a motion picture.

Chris Rock is a genius as the motor-mouth who takes no prisoners... on stage. Because that's all he knows. The man has a single gear and that's it. Even if you ask him to play Hamlet, he cannot help cracking sixty jokes a minute. It's a part of his constitution. Such built-in explosive comedic talent and well developed sense of social injustice and irony is fantastic for a standup but that does not make an actor. Please.

The story itself is as cliche-ridden and hackneyed as you'll ever come across...

CIA has this super secret deal going on with a perpetually-smirking slick-haired psychotic Russian ex-colonel... then there is an urgent need to find the identical twin of a crucial CIA operative that gets bumped in the process...

And what do you know? They find the identical twin (SEPARATED AT BIRTH of course!), a high-IQ hustler from the other side of the tracks, but he comes with an OPPOSITE personality! Wow... what a novel idea, isn't it?

So how is the Chris Rock character going to pass himself off as the genuine article? That's the question... Is he going to be able to make it? (What you think?) We sit there watching with white knuckles not because of the suspense but exasperation.

And the Executive Producers who ponied up the millions for this exercise in futility... people, are you out of your minds? What do you put in your cereal in the mornings? Or do you sign the check before even reading the script?

Breathtakingly bad scenes of exposition... can you imagine, top CIA officials (with a weakness for black shiny leather jackets for some odd reason) meet the "bad twin" from the streets of New Jersey at a run-down public park, complete with the BROWN HR FOLDER of the deceased twin (I'm not making this one up)!!! How could the actors keep a straight face going through a scene like that?

And then Hollywood complains that most films do not make money... If they are like this one, why should they?

See it only if you'd like to witness a great British actor humiliate himself by trying to talk thrash and force himself to say "Bitch!" to a rather bemused Rock. Very sad.

10 eye-rollovers out of ten.


Related Tags: hollywood, film, movies, thriller, spy, anthony hopkins, chris rock, bad company, cia

Ugur Akinci is a writer with 20 years of experience. Visit his web site http://www.writer111.com for more information.

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