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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Bad Company
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 out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
1 star out of 4
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So how bad is this spy thriller? Bad enough to rank as a waste of time
and money. Which is really a shame because one expects so much more of actors
Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock and director Joel Schumacher. Devised by four
credited writers, the plot revolves around a suitcase-sized, high-tech nuclear
bomb that's up for sale by a Russian black-market arms dealer (Peter Stormare).
In order to prevent an anti-American terrorist disaster, the CIA has to get it
before Afghan fanatics do. Only their top undercover agent (Chris Rock) is
killed in Prague while protecting the life of his boss (Anthony Hopkins), whose
only hope then is to find and train the dead agent's separated-at-birth
identical twin (Chris Rock) to complete the mission - within a time frame of
nine days. Predictably, the hip-hop brother is a fast-talking, chess-hustling,
ticket-scalping, part-time DJ from Jersey City who's the mirror-opposite of his
refined, self-sacrificing, Harvard-educated sibling. So can the reluctant
brother then double-cross the bad guys? You can guess whether the hackneyed
fish-out-of-water formulaic ruse works - while watching how easy it is to
transport explosives into America via air freight and ruminating on lines like
"The cold war's over. Terrorism, fanaticism is global." Curiously, producer
Jerry Bruckheimer has lifted elements from his own "Enemy of the State,"
starring Will Smith, and injected them into this slick-but-stale story in which
there's virtually nothing that's original. Remember other twin sets: Jean-Claude
Van Damme in "Double Impact," Arnold Schwarnezegger in "The Sixth Day"? Even the
odd-couple comedy conceit of Hopkins/Rock misfires. On the Granger Movie Gauge
of 1 to 10, "Bad Company" is a bizarre, botched 3. Made before 9/11, it should
have remained on the shelf.
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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