Double X: The Name of the Game

I ordered this purely and simply to see the much missed British great in a serious role. As a production, it suffers from the usual problems associated with a low budget, it looks very cheap and nasty. It starts off as a very interesting story, but soon turns into a cheap gangster thriller, with a plot more fitting to a film from the 1940's. Even the likes of Simon Ward and Bernard Hill cannot help save it, Norman Wisdom is the only saving grace, he is delightful as the tragic Clutten. The best moment is the car chase, which looks really rather good, but sadly it's downhill from there on. I know it's 1992, but it looks like it was filmed on a camcorder.

The ending, is terrible. 5/10

"Iggy fronted the organisation but the brains behind it was a man called Edward Ross - cold, calculating and totally ruthless."

At times, "Double X" is so inept and clumsy that it looks like a 10-year-old's concept of a gangster thriller. In "The Long Good Friday", you believed in the organisation headed by Bob Hoskins' superbly frightening Harold Shand - by contrast, Simon Ward's bunch look like a set of kids playing at being criminals. The idea that a man whose criminal empire seems to encompass a dozen people and a small nightclub is planning to build new cities across the world is as ludicrous and overblown as the film's pretensions.

On the credit side, "Double X" manages a neat twist two-thirds of the way through as well as a couple of good performances - Chloë Annett as Sarah takes the film more seriously than it deserves whilst Bernard Hill has lots of fun as the limping and sardonic Iggy. But the photography is strangely drab despite some nice locations and the soundtrack is awful. The makers should check out Ian David Diaz's excellent "The Killing Zone" for an example of how to make this type of film.

Finally, watch out for the scene where Norman Wisdom slaps his double-crossing lover Gemma Craven. This has to be the wimpiest, most laughable "slap" in motion picture history! The fact that the director didn't ask for a retake sums up the problems with "Double X".

You probably thought every film Norman Wisdom ever made had been on TV at least a dozen times in the past five years. But his personal favourite of his own films was an independent production in which he played a safecracker trying to go straight called 'There Was a Crooked Man' which flopped in 1960 and which problems over rights have kept off TV screens for over fifty years.

Shot at Bray Studios and in Scotland, parts of 'Double X' resemble a semi-remake of the earlier film; although in 1960 Wisdom would have played a character called Norman rather than Arthur, and Robert Asher would have breezed through it in about half the time. A serviceable cast (including Bernard Hill camping it up in the role Garry Marsh would have played in the fifties) disappear and then reappear throughout this tinny, talky film which looks and sounds as if it was shot on a camcorder by film students; and is more dated after less than thirty years than the earlier film probably is after over sixty.

DOUBLE X: THE NAME OF THE GAME is one of those long-forgotten independent films that came out during the 1990s, when a lot of young directors suddenly found themselves with the means to make their own movies unconstrained by the studios. This one's directed by a guy better known for his work on the BBC TV series DOCTORS and apparently based on a novel by an author nobody's heard of, which doesn't bode well.

It turns out to be an unwieldy little gangster film featuring Norman Wisdom in the leading role. Norman Wisdom! Yes, I couldn't quite believe it myself either. It's very odd to see Wisdom playing it straight and as an elderly hero type, although casting him as the young woman's father instead of grandfather was a very odd decision. There are even a couple of action scenes which are incredibly embarrassing for the old-time comedian. Bless him. He's not the world's greatest actor, but you love him anyway because he's Wisdom.

The film features a second lead in the form of CARRIE star William Katt. He's obviously been shoehorned into the plot in a bid to appeal to American audiences who'd no doubt scratch their heads at the prospect of seeing some old duffer as the main character. Katt feels wooden and uncomfortable, but being a fan of the actor I liked him anyway. The film begins quite promisingly with explosions and car chases and the like before descending into inanity with a boring, drawn-out back story with some very unsatisfying plot twists.

Basically, Wisdom plays a bad guy surrounded by even more ruthless gangster types. A bit of back-and-forth back-stabbing plays out, along with some mild thriller elements, but it's not particularly believable and the story seems to literally fall apart as it goes on. To compensate for this, a bunch of familiar faces have been brought into play. Bernard Hill and Simon Ward are here, alongside cameos for Derren Nesbitt and Vladek Sheybal, and the gorgeous RED DWARF actress Chloe Annett. Their presence doesn't make DOUBLE X a good film, but it is a fun oddity to seek out.

OK, before launching into anything lets just point out that this was made on a budget that would struggle to produce an episode of EastEnders. Filming anything on a small budget and producing something that looks this shiny, with so many professional looking stunts, should be complemented on cinematography and the sheer amount of work that is going to have gone into this production. However, that's about as far as the complements can go. The scenery and setting for the first half is brilliant, having a good looking (if slightly clichéd) car chase through Portpatrick followed up by an intriguing Tarantino like style of narrating Norman Wisdom's background involving the London mob rounded off with an eventful stand- off in an abandoned castle. It is from here on out that the film starts to fail. The American character is not well acted and up to this point, despite the nice twist, he was not heavily part of the story. Now that he is trust onto the screen as the main character, nearly every line is delivered so unconvincingly that it takes away from every scene any sense of atmosphere. Bernard Hill and Simon Ward bring a little bit of fun with their characters, even if Hills' Irish accent is a bit iffy. The music is stereotypical 90's but hasn't dated so badly that its painful to listen to, quite honestly the music timing is spot on perfect and adds plenty of tension to the most important scenes. The second half of the film is a complete let down and the steam really runs out around an hour into the running time, with too many stupid dialog plot holes and bad editing the movie ends on a note that makes you realize that after Scotland is left behind, you should just have turned it off. The ending is so abrupt it'll actually make you sit back and wonder what the hell just happened. Overall, the first half is an entertaining piece of cinema with Wisdom and Hill stealing the show alongside the stunning Scottish scenery. The stunt work is impressive for such a low budget and the music is hit and miss in providing moods. However, the rest of the cast and crew don't seem to know what they are doing and the script is so bare and corny that missed opportunities are rife throughout the entire film. Double X garners a bad reputation but its not all rightly deserved, its definitely worth a watch if nothing else is on and a must for any Norman Wisdom fans out there to see him turn his hand to a serious role - and he's very good at it.