Starring Richard Gere, Topher Grace,
Martin Sheen, Stephen Moyer, Odette Yustman, Stana Katic, Chris
Marquette, Tamer Hassan, Nicole Forester, Jeffrey Pierce and Yuriy
Sardarov.
Screenplay by Michael Brandt & Derek Haas.
Directed by
Michael Brandt.
Distributed by Image Entertainment. 98 minutes. Rated
PG-13.
The
Double
The
Cold War has been over for decades, but don’t tell Hollywood that.
While Russian spies are not quite as prevalent in film as they were in the
80s, there are still a whole lot of movies that revolve around the remnants
of the KGB. (The Arabs have somewhat taken over the Russian shorthand bad
guy position, but their spies are generally much less plot friendly. Also,
it’s worth noting that one of the production companies for this film is
based out of the Middle East, making you wonder if they want to deflect the
negative perception.)
You
have to wonder how much juice the Russian Secret Service can still have,
particularly considering one of the leads here points out that he watched
the fall of Communism on TV when he was only ten.
Still, The Double is a twisty spy drama straight out of the Reagan
years, full of no-good Russian spies and gruff G-men working diligently to
capture them.
The
film works as well as it does mostly due to the stars. Particularly Richard
Gere is terrific as an aging retired FBI agent named Paul Shepherdson, who
is pulled back into active duty when his long-absent archenemy – a communist
assassin known as “Cassius” seems to have reappeared and murdered a US
Senator. Shepherdson insists that it must be a copycat because Cassius is
long dead, but his superior at the Agency (a stern Martin Sheen) believes
that the super-assassin is back to his old ways. Therefore, he saddles
Shepherdson with a whiz-kid agent named Ben Geary (Topher Grace) to track
down the old spy.
Their styles are completely different – Shepherdson is an old-school
beat-the-answer-out agent while Geary is more into CSI precision and
research. The two grate on each other as they follow the clues through a
series of slightly convoluted plot twists.
Of
course, one of the main twists (there are actually two that really stand
out) occurs maybe a half-hour into the film, robbing the film of much of the
suspense that would seem to be inherent on the premise.
Sadly, for a film that is trying to be a whodunit (and whydunit) the film
plays awfully close to the vest with the clues. For example, a newspaper
crossword puzzle with Russian answers it shown so fleetingly that it is
nearly impossible to get its significance until the puzzle is pulled back
out at the film’s climax to expose a bad guy in one of the film’s “gotcha”
moments.
Therefore, instead of a mystery or crime procedural, the story of The
Double feels more like a slight-of-hand trick. The filmmakers try to
make us look one way with the first turn, then pull a rabbit out of the hat
with the second. It almost gets the feel of later M. Night Shyamalan, so
desperate to surprise that it sometimes throws little things like plot
coherence and character consistency aside.
Still, in an old school way, the film is rather fun in its spy moves. The
crosses and double crosses may not always be realistic, but they are mostly
intriguing.
