Bad Company

Review by Clint Morris

Poor Anthony Hopkins. He really should have quit while he was ahead, and retired when he said he would. Sure, his career has come full circle – but it's also taken a sudden U-turn, dipped down an undistinguished lane and has now turned in at the Rock residence.

And when Chris Rock comes out to greet you at the gate, rapturous that you and he will work together – that's your final chance to hit reverse and back out onto a more gratifying freeway.

Film's most respected acting legend and film's most cringe worthy comedy clown team for Bad Company, a big-budget waste of tax payer funds and yet another exercise in seeing how many cars, buildings, and people he can blow up in two hours. Hopkins, and even Rock, just stand aside and watch it all unfold. Naturally, we're looking at the latest from Jerry Bruckheimer.

Rock is Jake Hayes, a browbeaten ticket scalper, who has to replace his dead twin brother in an ongoing CIA sting involving a nuclear warhead for sale by Russian mobsters. Making sure it all goes smoothly is the reluctant, but benevolent, agent Oakes, played by Hopkins.

Hayes thinks posing as his twin is going to be the easiest $50,000 anyone's ever made, but as soon as the gunmen track him down and start popping bullets in his direction, he becomes more than a little diffident.

But Hayes has never accomplished anything from his life – which disappoints his girlfriend and mother, so if he's ever going to win points, this seems to be the ticket.

You've been teamed with Chris Rock, which would have to be a sure-fire sign that something's gone wrong – and when it's an action film from Jerry Bruckheimer, you'd have to be an extra-terrestrial to realise it is hardly going to help one's career. Maybe Anthony Hopkins just wanted to have some fun? Fair enough, but how about this next time Tony: ask for a script.

There's so little for Hopkins and even Rock to do in this film – besides keep away from all the exploding buildings and cars – that you wonder why either of them would consider the film.

Soon enough, actors like this have to become attentive to the fact that all of Bruckheimer's action films are becoming the same – and no amount of tense Mark Mancini music or wide-angle lense shots are going to make a film. Most of the plot devices – disarming the bomb, masquerading as someone else, Russian villains, the old slipping down the laundry chute moment – are as old hat as the regurgitated title itself.

Hopkins may have woken himself up to this fact half-way through filming – because he seems to have fallen asleep by the 30-minute mark.

Bad Company has a couple of good moments – just seeing Hopkins tell Rock to: "... get in the car bitch!" is worthwhile - and it is minutely congenial, but you'd hardly want to spend the weekly wage on treating the family to it.

2.5 out of 5

Bad Company
Australian release: Thursday July 18th
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Chris Rock, Peter Stormare, Irma P.Hall, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Gabriel Macht.
Director: Joel Schumacher.
Website: Click here

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