Bad Company (2002)

Directed by Joel Schumacher. Starring Chris Rock, Anthony Hopkins, John Slattery, Peter Stormare, Gabriel Macht, Matthew Marsh, Kerry Washington, Brooke Smith, Garcelle Beauvais, Daniel Sunjata, Dragan Mićanović, Irma P. Hall. [PG-13]

More mindless mayhem from the Jerry Bruckheimer factory, with the only thing separating it even an inch from the pack is the wisecracking from Chris Rock, which, in these scenarios, is rarely funny or appropriate. He plays an educated and sophisticated CIA operative who gets killed in the opening scene, but it turns out he has a twin brother—haven’t we seen this far-fetched premise sixteen times or so before?—a street-smart chess-hustler-slash-ticket-scalper ne’er-do-well recruited by Hopkins to fill in for the dead sibling for a dangerous operation (the details of which don’t matter—completely routine stuff). Bullets fly, stuff blows up, the camera jerks around too much to make much of it visually clear, the usual; its one chance to leave an impression comes from the “training” sequences where Rock is taught how to be cultured and the comic gets to riff…but as noted earlier, it’s too tired to ever be more than occasionally amusing, and is ultimately a waste of time since at no point does he ever have to impress the generic bad guys with his taste in wine or art. As his handler/partner, Hopkins sleepwalks through the thing, and never for a moment appears invested in the story or the unlikely hero, not even when the screenplay provides him dialogue attesting otherwise. Joel Schumacher meanwhile brings nothing to the aesthetics or rhythms that’s fresh or unique—it looks like a clone of just about every other Bruckheimer action flick helmed by Tony Scott, Michael Bay, etc. Sure, it’s more watchable than the average Bay production (or Scott at his worst), but it’s two empty hours of mayhem and quips you probably won’t think twice about. (I made sure to write this within an hour of watching the movie to make sure I didn’t forget everything about it before then.) Shea Whigham appears unbilled in a minor part.

39/100