Bad Company

I don't really know what I expected from this film, but I certainly found much more than I had been looking for. Given that it stars Chris Rock, I did expect a great deal of irreverent, silly comedy. What I found, instead, was an interesting spy film and a very, very odd buddy picture.

The acting from both Rock and Hopkins is exceptional. The plot, while a bit thin, is interesting.

The film pulled me in and held me from beginning to end.

Chris Rock stars as a CIA agent and a street hustler, twin brothers separated at birth. When the more successful brother, Kevin (ironically the one who got his act together and made a life for himself, yet also the one who got himself killed) is shot escaping a touchy sting operation in which he and his team try to buy a stolen nuclear weapon with cyber money that doesn't exist in real life, the CIA are faced with abandoning a 2 year project and risking themselves because their new enemies are going to want to know what happened to their deal or seeking out Kevin's twin brother Jake, who makes a living whipping the crap out of unsuspecting chess players in Central Park and selling scalped tickets to just about any event you can imagine.

At this point in the film, it's clear that the premise is a remarkably strong one for an action comedy - the irony of having a street hustler suddenly thrown into a top secret CIA operation. And when you throw in Chris Rock as the hustler and Anthony Hopkins as his new mentor, it seems that you simply can't go wrong. Unfortunately, the movie seems to lose track of the fact that it is a comedy, and in more ways that just forgetting to throw in some good one-liners.

Bad Company was made and scheduled to be released before September 11th, but was then delayed for obvious reasons (similar to the obvious reasons that delayed the release of the much more incendiary Collateral Damage, given its subject matter). Because the movie was written before the attacks, the writers can't have been expected to have known what bad taste it was to center the plot on a stolen nuclear device that was meant to level a major city on the eat coast. I don't hold that against it because of the 9/11 attacks, but only because it is such a tired premise. When are we going to see some good action movies that are about something other than one guy who has to save a whole city from terrorists with big bombs?

There are points in the movie where it seems that the writers stopped and said, `Oh wait, this is supposed to be a comedy,' and threw in a few completely unamusing jokes here and there, mostly in the form of totally inappropriate one-liners from Rock that almost invariably fall completely flat. He and Hopkins do, however, have a bit of chemistry onscreen, but it is mostly wasted. This is a flashy Bruckheimer production, obviously, but it is one of the least interesting action films that Bruckheimer has turned out in years. Granted, most of his productions are cheesy crap, but this one even manages to be boring despite itself.

I watched Bad Company right after watching Men in Black II, and so was already prepared for disappointment, but I found myself trying to figure out why exactly the movie is called Bad Company. Surely it can't be because the CIA is forced to employ someone literally off the street, because he turns out to be remarkably bright and much more capable than they had anticipated. Then at the end of the movie, just as the bad guy is about to get killed, he says something about how we Americans think we're so great but we just sit here while people all over the world suffer and die, and we just watch it on our televisions and grab another burger. This is, of course, disturbingly true, and it is not a small part of the reason that four airplane were hijacked in late 2001. It's something that Americans love to ignore so that we can pretend we're victims. The victims on September 11th were the people in the buildings and the people in the planes and al of their families, the country itself was not.

Does `Bad Company,' then, refer to the company that the rest of the world is in, being in the company of America? It seems that the message that this film leaves resonating in your mind at the end is about what a selfish and greedy country America is, and how capable we are to ignore the suffering of the rest of the world as long as we have our fancy cars and our money and our heart disease instead of starvation. In this case, I guess Bad Company's not such a bad movie after all. It certainly gives a pretty potent wake up call at the end, but one that will probably be largely ignored along with the rest of the film. Ah well.

Street punk (Chris Rock) discovers his stranged brother was a state agent who has just been killed . Then the African-American street-wise hustler is drafted into CIA Agency to carry out an operation , being experienced Agent Oakes (Anthony Hopkins) the Company's grey eminence to train him in place of the murdered twin he knew he had. He has nine days to fill his brother's place. Two Mismatched Partners. One Messed Up Case! The World is in Good Hands . These Two People Are In Bad Company!

Typical plot about identity replacement in which a roguish young is drafted by US agency honcho Hopkins to take over his bro' mission , which involves terrorists , destructive bomb , nuclear warhead , mayhem and the tourist cities of Prague and New York City . Considering these so-so elements , it's no wonder this one got delayed its premiere . Cue a crash course in spy school , knee-jerk thrills involving Eastern European terrorists in tight leather trousers , hilarious scenes , spurious intrigue with nuclear device ticking away at the heart of Manhattan and some of the least funny shtick this side of global meldown . Stars Chris Rock who deserved a better film , but he salvages this one, at times ; anyway , he gives a sympathetic acting . He's up against a standard issue plot that merely serves to get to the next action set piece which, this being a Jerry Bruckheimer lavish production, are done well , but done too often. The two likable main actors : Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins , are well accompanied by a fine support cast with plenty of familiar faces , such as : John Slattery , Kerry Washington , Matthew Marsh , Gabriel Macht , Garcelle Beauvais, Peter Stormare, Brooke Smith, Irma P. Hall , Daniel Sunjata , among others.

It displays a climatic and moving musical score by composer Trevor Rabin . Likewise , colorful and brilliant cinematography by cameraman Dariusz Wolski, including a lot of sightseeing from bridge of Prague, Czech, Railway station Praha hlavni nadrazi, Wilsonova, Prague, Czech Republic, Grand Central Terminal, New York City, World Trade Center, Manhattan, New York City, Calvary Cemetery, Woodside, Queens, New York, USA. Made in usual syle by Joel Schumacher whose credits include some of the most egregious Hollywood codswallop of the last thirty years , such as : ¨Dying young¨, ¨A time to kill¨ , ¨Flatners¨, ¨Batman and Robin¨, ¨Batman Forver¨ and he also made a successful musical ¨Phantom of Opera¨ . As Schumacher manages to submit his worst insticts , but it doesn't really help. Rating : 5.5/10 . Acceptable and passable, but average . The flick will appeal to Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins fans.

Chris Rock is hilarious in this film. Anthony Hopkins is good too.

It includes many funny scenes and the action is also good. But the plot it's nothing special at all and the film is not very bad but not very good either. If Chris Rock were not in it, it would be bad. I would rate it a 6/10

After reading so many negative reviews of this movie, I expected the worst and almost didn't see it. But I was in the mood for a movie and it was the only one showing that I hadn't already seen that was even remotely of interest to me. To my surprise I enjoyed the movie and where I think so many critics went wrong was to view this movie as a comedy, which it really isn't, except for a few humorous moments as might be expected in any such action movie. And Anthony Hopkins actually played his role the way it should have been played. It was not a role calling for a wild comic genius but one calling for a very serious-minded professional who is involved in trying to train a novice in just a few days for a deadly game involving a nuke. Chris Rock also played his role as it should have been played and restrained himself from his usual antics, as in "Lethal Weapon 4." Not a great movie but much better than the awful "The Sum Of All Fears."