The Double is an exercise in bland incompetence, a film that attempts little more than to go through the motions of a boilerplate double-agent spy plot but can’t even manage that simple task without getting mired in a sea of confusing double-crosses and nonsensical plotting.
The film involves two agents — retired CIA man Paul Shepherdson (Richard Gere, Brooklyn’s Finest) and young FBI up-and-comer Ben Geary (Topher Grace, Too Big to Fail) — tracking down a Russian assassin, Cassius, who has come out of hiding and killed a U.S. senator. They’re overseen by Martin Sheen (Stella Days), who really deserves better than this.
Director and co-writer Michael Brandt (Wanted) only waits a half hour to reveal Cassius’ identity, although it’s easy to guess mere minutes into the film. He doesn’t, however, make clear Cassius’ target or timeline, so there is virtually nothing at stake for most of the film. Brandt tries to force some tension through contrived bits of dramatic irony, but it all adds up to very little.
The script is generic at best and supremely clumsy at worst. If you took a drink every time a character awkwardly delivers exposition about another character’s past, you’d be hammered by the second reel (“I never thought I’d see the day when someone got the drop on Paul Shepherdson!”)
Brandt’s direction is no better. The camerawork is thankfully steady, but there’s very little inventiveness to the action. He throws in all sorts of superfluous cuts and slo-mo sequences that do little more than obscure the rote predictability of the fights and chases.
All of this could be forgiven if Gere’s performance were even remotely interesting, but he doesn’t bother to wake up from the cinematic coma he’s been in since about 1978. It’s impossible to tell what he’s even trying to suggest. Is he supposed to be sympathetic? Brooding? He provokes no response. He’s a narcoleptic, blank-faced cipher. He can be whatever we want him to be, because he provides nothing.
Floundering, the film throws out a series of increasingly improbable reveals and reverses in the final act, but this leaves the plot badly muddled and full of more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese. If you walk out of the theater knowing who everyone works for and what they’re working toward, you’re a sharper viewer than I. (One character, Boz, is particularly baffling.)
The final third makes the narrative near-incomprehensible, but Brandt accomplishes the dubious trick of making the insane, wild reversals feel mundane. The Double aims to be nothing more than a lifeless shrug of a movie, but it somehow even messes that up.
VERDICT: Maybe Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy will be good?
rgifford@umdbk.com
