Susan Granger’s review of “BAD COMPANY” (Touchstone Pictures)
So how bad is this spy thriller? Bad enough to rank as a waste of time and money. Which is really a shame because one expects so much more of actors Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock and director Joel Schumacher. Devised by four credited writers, the plot revolves around a suitcase-sized, high-tech nuclear bomb that’s up for sale by a Russian black-market arms dealer (Peter Stormare). In order to prevent an anti-American terrorist disaster, the CIA has to get it before Afghan fanatics do. Only their top undercover agent (Chris Rock) is killed in Prague while protecting the life of his boss (Anthony Hopkins), whose only hope then is to find and train the dead agent’s separated-at-birth identical twin (Chris Rock) to complete the mission – within a time frame of nine days. Predictably, the hip-hop brother is a fast-talking, chess-hustling, ticket-scalping, part-time DJ from Jersey City who’s the mirror-opposite of his refined, self-sacrificing, Harvard-educated sibling. So can the reluctant brother then double-cross the bad guys? You can guess whether the hackneyed fish-out-of-water formulaic ruse works – while watching how easy it is to transport explosives into America via air freight and ruminating on lines like “The cold war’s over. Terrorism, fanaticism is global.” Curiously, producer Jerry Bruckheimer has lifted elements from his own “Enemy of the State,” starring Will Smith, and injected them into this slick-but-stale story in which there’s virtually nothing that’s original. Remember other twin sets: Jean-Claude Van Damme in “Double Impact,” Arnold Schwarnezegger in “The Sixth Day”? Even the odd-couple comedy conceit of Hopkins/Rock misfires. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bad Company” is a bizarre, botched 3. Made before 9/11, it should have remained on the shelf.
