Bad Company review

Bad Company is an action thriller vehicle for the comedic talents of Chris Rock. Unfortunately the vehicle never gets out of first gear before crashing into a wall of clichés and absurdity. It would be foolhardy to expect much more from the directing/producing team of Joel Schumacher and Jerry Bruckheimer, but even by their normally explosive standards, Bad Company is a dud.

Teaming the motor-mouthed Rock with the languid Hopkins as ill-matched partners trying to save America from terrorism may have seemed an inspired idea, but the laboured script gives them precious little opportunity to develop any rapport. Instead it caters to Rock's stand-up routine, as his dialogue is peppered with throwaway lines like, "In my house we were so poor, we licked stamps for dinner."

Figuring that two Chris Rocks are better than one, he plays identical twins separated at birth. When CIA agent Kevin Pope is assassinated while negotiating with the Russian mafia to buy a nuclear bomb to prevent it from falling into the hands of a terrorist group, Pope's bosses, lead by Gaylord Oakes (Anthony Hopkins), contact his brother, a street smart ticket tout, Jake Hayes, and convince him to step in for the sibling he didn't know he had. The old twins estranged at birth plot is almost as tired as the one where a coarse, uneducated character has only a short time to pass himself off as sophisticated and urbane. In this instance, Jake has nine days to become the multi-linguist antiques expert his Rhodes scholar brother was.

If you ignore the silly plot, which is certainly what the writers, Gary Goodman and David Himmelstein seemed to have done, watching the always funny Rock provides occasional light relief. At times he's almost more amusing than the sight of Hopkins decked out with a black baseball cap and wraparound shades. Almost.

Bad Company, the latest release since September 11th dealing with the threat of a terrorist attack on America, confines its political indictment of the US to such cornball aphorisms as "your country grows rich while everyone else starves." This well-worn sentiment is, however, not as hackneyed as the red numbers of a digital clock attached to a bomb as it counts down to annihilation with only Jake able to stop it. In a film short on inspiration, there are no prizes for guessing what happens next.