Richard Gere stars as Paul, a retired agent who spent 20 years trying to track down arch bad guy, Cassius. He’s called back into action when Cassius’ signature garrote murder technique is used to kill off a senator. Young whizz kid analyst, Topher Grice, is teamed up with the reluctant Gere to try and finally nail the bad guy.
Of course Gere is reluctant at first, but soon the young agent wins his grudging respect. With occasional input from an embarrassed looking Martin Sheen, playing a sector chief , the unlikely and mismatched duo start to fit the case together.
But wait! Can it be so straight forward? Will ‘the double’ of the title refer to a lookalike or maybe a double agent? Is everyone the person they say they are? Is anyone?
This was a really terrible thriller that made no sense at all, and had such unwieldy pot turns you’d think that the writers were plucking random ideas out of a big bowl and sticking them together to make a script.
The film opens with a scene of some Mexican migrants getting killed off for no apparent reason. Maybe it was lifted from a Trump election broadcast? It’s brought up later on but just as a minor plot point not the pivotal event that the scene suggests.
Gere is the clichéd, jaded ex-agent reluctant to get back on the job and even less keen to take a rookie under his wing. Topher offers little as greenhorn agent Ben, who starts out in awe of Gere but after a few scenes in his company stars to smell a rat - or was it a hamster?
The initial wrong foot was decently handled, but in retrospect it couldn’t have gone any other way. Who is the shadowy villain? Well you only have two choices and the title is a bit of a giveaway. As it is, we get wrong footed twice but not in a satisfying manner - in a ‘that doesn’t make a lick of sense’ kind of way.
The film probably sneaked a release on the back of its star names, but everyone looks disinterested and, apart from one decent car crash, there is nothing memorable about this film at all.
The same 'wire from the watch' murder gets carried out so often, you’d think the prop must have been rented for the weekend and they had to get as much use out of it as possible.
The characters are as thin as a steamrolled pizza with the female parts being especially weak. Topher’s wife has nothing to do apart from simper a lot and fail to fall off a ladder.
Gere wins no empathy points at all and is downright creepy in places. In one scene at a pee-wee baseball game a lady asks him which kid is his. Gere say none, he just likes to watch. Why child services weren’t immediately called, I don’t know.
The film saunters to a low rent showdown in a warehouse with outrageous revelations being piled on top of a steaming load of unlikely events.
I’m not 100% sure who was doing what to whom at the end, but that’s OK - none of the characters did either.
THE Tag line - Double your fun - watch a party election broadcast instead.
33%
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