The Double | Review

The opening credits of The Double should give you an immediate clue to the following proceedings, transposing the figure of a man in the capital O and B of the title. Why the O and the B? Wouldn’t a man in the top and bottom spaces of the letter B have been appropriate, as these spaces are, in a true sense of the word, a double? Well that, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of the level of coherence for this film, the directorial debut of Michael Brandt (the co-writer of such fare as 2 Fast 2 Furious, 2003, and Wanted, 2008). Character motivations, sequences of events, and that thing called plausibility are all a bit offensively slapdash, starting with a title that’s trying to infer way more than it had the brains to set out to accomplish. The tagline reads, “Keep your enemies close,” but should include, “and your clichés closer.”

The Director of the CIA (Martin Sheen) is in a definite pickle. A US Senator that was being investigated by the FBI has just been murdered, and the modus operandi fits that of a ruthless Soviet assassin, Cassius, missing for twenty odd years. Due to the high profile of the victim, the Director beseeches a retired agent (Richard Gere), whose mission had been to eliminate a group of Soviet assassins known as the Cassius Seven, to work on the case with a rookie FBI recruit (Topher Grace), whose master thesis was on assassin Cassius. A minor but pointedly referenced theme that keeps popping up is how much the FBI sucks in comparison to the CIA. The agencies actually work together on high profile cases now, it seems. Bah! That’s bureaucracy, as Sheen’s character quips. After visiting an imprisoned assassin, Brutus (Stephen Moyer), and plying him for information by promising him a radio that goes directly to the sad Russian ballad station when energized, the film reveals its first big and utterly predictable twist (which is why it’s implied in the film’s trailer)—Richard Gere is not who he says he is. For being such a superior agency, it seems the CIA has rather weak background procedures in place. (Speaking of which, wouldn’t you love to ask an ex-operative what they think about the CIA in the movies?) And, what do you suppose happens when a film grants such a major revelation early on? Well, there’s another big twist waiting for the grand finale, of course.

The Double has several major flaws, and the surface blemish is the casting. Richard Gere, while not a terrible performer, has the tendency to ham it up, which he resoundingly does here. In one odd moment at the film’s beginning, Gere is complacently watching a children’s baseball game. A somewhat attractive blonde woman asks him for the time and they get to talking. Asking which child belongs to him, Gere replies, “I just live down the street and come to watch a good game.” The blonde thinks this is sweet. The rest of us should think, in 2011, that this is weird, and not an effective way of character development, which is what the filmmaker intended. Pair this with some lazy direction when a flashback sequence to 1988 shows Gere and Martin Sheen looking exactly the same as they do in present time. The CIA, it seems, has used botox for decades. Martin Sheen is more of a distraction than anything, given nothing to do but look doubtful while he orders coffee. And Topher Grace is extremely poor casting as the eager, nerdy rookie. Grace fails to imbue any of his scenes with any conviction, coming off as smug and insincere. Worse, cast as his wife is one of the most beastly female performers rising her way through the Hollywood mainstream, Odette Annabel (formerly Yustman, of You Again, 2010; The Unborn, 2009).

Scenes requiring her to exude any type of emotion are usually uncomfortably funny, and in static scenes where nothing is required, she somehow manages to overact (as in perilously shelving books in this film). But the cherry on the crap cake is the terrible story development. As each convolution presents itself in the narrative, all that has come before loses all sense and credibility. Without enumerating further, let’s just say that the filmmakers struck a syntax faux pas—this is certainly one Double negative.

Rating 1 stars