Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Chris Rock
Director: Joel Schumacher
Rated: M
JERRY Bruckheimer is producer of Bad Company . He is a Hollywood heavyweight with Bonnie & Clyde, Flashdance, Top Gun and Con Air among his hits. He raises serious money for his films and that’s what makes this film such a waste of time.
Kevin Pope (Rock) is an undercover CIA agent in Prague. His mentor is Gaylord Oakes (Hopkins) a veteran CIA operative. During negotiations with the Russian mafia for the purchase of a stray nuclear bomb things go wrong and Pope is killed. Separated at birth and unbeknown to either man, Pope’s identical twin brother Jake Hayes (Rock), an unemployed ticket scalper, is recruited off the streets of New York to finish the job Pope began.
What is galling about films like Bad Company is how sloppy they are. With so many people reading and working on the script, why are there so many gaps? For instance, how many church choirs, before dawn, process through the streets with incense and banners, singing Gregorian Chant at full voice. They must do so in Prague!
Why would the CIA work so hard to train Jake up only for him to completely drop his guard in front of the hotel staff? How is it that while Jake’s hotel is under constant CIA surveillance, Kevin’s former girlfriend, who is a journalist with CNN, slips in unnoticed?
Why does daylight dawn two hours after Jake is called away from his nighttime dinner engagement? The Czechs must eat later than the Spanish!
Worst of all even when Jake has a nuclear bomb in his car and is being shot at by the evil men who have killed his brother and other colleagues, he never loses his loud mouth routine and the streetwise one-liner.
No matter what you throw at him, you can’t take New York out of the boy!
Bad Company is a mess, an expensive, beautifully-shot and finely-crafted mess. What was Anthony Hopkins thinking?
