OK, I'm officially scared now. In the last two weeks, Hollywood would have me believe that the only thing standing between the free world and nuclear annihilation is ... gulp ... Ben Affleck and Chris Rock!
Everyone altogether now, shout it, "WE'RE GONNA DIE!!!"
This week's flirtation with atomic hellfire on American soil is Bad Company, one of the dumbest action comedies in recent memory. Rock plays Jake Hayes, a down-on-his-luck hustler who scalps tickets to Knicks games and other special events via his cellphone. Jake grew up in foster care, never knowing that his natural mother died giving birth to twins. The brother he never knew he had was lucky enough to be placed with a wealthy family, and wound up attending the Naval Academy and becoming a top CIA spy.
The movie opens with Jake's twin getting killed after posing as an arms dealer to purchase a nuclear bomb on the Czech Republic's black market. The final sale is going to go down in nine days, and CIA boss Gaylord Oakes (Anthony Hopkins) needs a miracle. He and his team of fashion models ... er, agents recruit Jake to masquerade as his dead brother (for a price) so that the purchase can be made and the criminals nabbed. All the while, rival European terrorists want to steal the bomb for their own purposes--destroying New York, of course.
Bad Company is fun in spots, but there is such an unbelievable undercurrent of rampant stupidity running throughout the film that I just can't recommend it. Now I know the CIA (and the FBI) in real life is getting hit from all sides right now for what they knew or should have know prior to Sept. 11. I will only say that if the Agency is indeed as an inept as they are portrayed in Bad Company, the organization should be splintered, disbanded, and replaced with zoo animals. They could do a better job.
I can hear the cries now. Calm down, Durgin! This is a movie, not a CIA training video. Yeah, this is a movie alright. This is a movie where CIA agents talk openly about top-secret agency matters in front of hotel staff members, regular civilians, and whoever else is in earshot. This is a movie where agents are supposed to protect Jake at all costs, but are so far away when the guy gets in trouble that only by the grace of God (or bad screenwriters) does he survive. This is a movie in which a luxury hotel in Prague is the site of a multi-floor gun battle between CIA agents and Euro-gangsters, in which thousands of rounds of ammo are blasted, yet not one guest peaks his/her head out to see what's going on. There is not even a single hotel clerk alarmed.
This is a movie that Anthony Hopkins should be embarrassed to whore himself out for. Late in the film, the Oscar winner is reduced to running through Grand Central Station yelling, "CIA! Out of my way!" The only time Hopkins even shows some animation in his features is when the CIA is electronically transferring $19 million into one of the gangster's bank accounts. He must have thought that was his salary for Bad Company being wired.
This is a movie where CIA sharpshooters set up in plain view on Czech landmarks when they would clearly be visible to any bad guy with just a decent set of binoculars. This is a movie in which quite possibly the entire New York office of the CIA falls for one of the oldest switcheroo tricks in the book when trying to tail a captured Jake in hopes that he will lead them to the bomb.
Now, here is one big (albeit morbid) nitpick. This is a movie in which the nuclear bomb codes can only be accessed after Jake's retinas are scanned by the bomb's computerized control system. When the bomb falls into the wrong hands, the solution is simple. The CIA can just kill Jake and gouge out his eyes. End of movie! That way, the terrorists will have NO WAY of actually arming the bomb. Morbid? Yes. But we're talking about a nuke being detonated in midtown Manhattan! Ten million people gone!
And, oh yes, we're talking about New York once again coming under attack in a stupid Hollywood movie directed by Joel Schumacher and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The movie feels so ... I don't know ... 1996. Back then, audiences cheered when aliens obliterated New York, Washington, and L.A. in Independence Day.Two years later, they cheered again when fragments of a meteor pelted the Big Apple and set it ablaze in Armageddon and when Godzilla stomped his way through the city.
Like The Sum of All Fears, here is another set of filmmakers who lack the cajones to make their terrorists Arabs. Instead, they go the safe villainous route of making them nondescript, completely unmemorable Euro-trash. Unlike Sum of All Fears, there is not the illusion of intelligence. The Tom Clancy film at least gives you the sense that you are on the inside with some people who vaguely know what they are doing. Bad Company is just an exercise in how much you have to turn your brain off to enjoy the film.
The film is handsomely produced. I loved the Prague locations. And there is a fantastic car chase just past the film's halfway point. Rock also does a decent job in the lead. His CIA training scenes are funny, and I like the fact that Jake is a guy who isn't dumb, he's just never applied himself. Still, there is no denying that all of Rock's best lines sound lifted from past stand-up performances (his funniest riffs involve how a woman could find her cheating husband if he were hanging out with Saddam Hussein faster than the CIA could). I was also shocked to see one gag in particular completely stolen from Thunderball.
The most guts the producers show is in including the word "Bad" in their title. They had to know critics would have a field day, punning the title in their headlines and closing paragraphs. I'll spare you that. Suffice to say, not even misery would love this "Company."
Bad Company is rated PG-13 for violence and language.
THE SUM OF ALL LOGIC: Several subscribers wrote in with their nitpicks of The Sum of All Fears, asking if I had noticed them. WARNING: Plot spoilers ahead. The answer to that question is: Yes, I did. But, including such nitpicks in my original review would have meant giving away the fact that a nuclear bomb explodes in Baltimore. I didn't want to do that. But since it is common knowledge now, I can briefly list some of the errors.
First of all, no one would be able to use a cellphone after a nuclear bomb is detonated. Second, even a low-level nuke would have wiped Baltimore off the map and not left any buildings standing. Third, Ben Affleck running through the rubble and the fact that his girlfriend (Bridget Moynihan) survives unscathed so close to where the blast occurred is just laughable. If the filmmakers had strived for authenticity, that scene at the end where Affleck and Moynihan are having a picnic near the White House lawn would have ended with both of them bald from the nuclear fallout and vomiting up the picnic lunch.
Too harsh an ending for a Hollywood film? Perhaps. But at least director
Phil Alden Robinson and Co. had the guts to take the plot in that direction
at all. And it was probably good that he didn't overdo the scenes of death
and destruction in the aftermath of the detonation. I still recommend the
film, but can only shake my head at "Bad Company."
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