![]() ![]() Jake is a ticket scalper and chess hustler who's in love with a nursing student ( Kerry Washington). The first was adopted by a rich family, went to Ivy League schools, and joined the CIA. After an opening scene in which the Chris Rock character is killed, we learn that he had a twin brother named Jake Hayes the babies were separated at birth and never knew about each other. The movie's a collision between three durable genres: Misfit Partners, Fish Out of Water and Mistaken Identity. It could be anything, as long as bad guys want it and good guys fight to keep them from it. The movie's an example of Possessoporn, in which the audience's lust is stirred not by how the characters look but by what they possess.The nuclear device is really only the McGuffin. And how people look when they are saying it. Every shot is loaded the movie makes its statement about this world, not with what is said, but with how and where it is said. Looking carefully at this movie is like savoring the very best that craft can accomplish on a big budget in modern Hollywood. The plot moves like clockwork, surprising us, then surprising us again, but I liked "Bad Company" more for its style, look and feel. There are times when these characters would rather keep their cool than stay alive. Barkin has sex with both men, but mostly keeps her clothes on. It is so expensive, so closed-in, so decadent, so witty, that it encourages the actors in their cool, mannered behavior. Green, has shot this world in a seductive way. The production designer, Andrew McAlpine, makes spaces which add to the characters: The Fishburne character, for example, lives in a house of deep reds and blues, where except for the kitchen there is no place to sit down except on an exercise machine. ![]() The movie is set in Seattle and was shot largely in Vancouver, and the production notes mention the architect Tadao Ando, whose buildings and style influence the interiors. And the Thomas dialogue speeds it all along, with scenes like the one where the mistress learns how to arm a gun, or when Langella explains about fly fishing. There are many other surprises, none of which I will reveal, because watching this movie is like seeing an onion unpeeled: Each level seems complete and whole, until you find another underneath. Meanwhile, the Barkin character has suggested to Fishburne that together they could knock off poor Grimes and take over the organization themselves.īut that is only one of many meanwhiles in Thomas's labyrinthine script. ![]() There is a nice supporting role for his mistress ( Gia Carides), who watches as he is bribed, and who turns out to like him more, and be smarter, than we think. Way out to here." The judge is played by David Ogden Stiers, as a man who likes to gamble and owes money to card players and horse racing bookies. "Do we look like the kind of people who want to go to prison?" (He is always assuring people in this way it's a running joke.) Langella is a smooth, polished actor who implies wit without revealing it, but listen to the way he says: "Before you attempt to suborn a superior court judge, you make sure he has his hand out. Wells tells him that for 4 percent of that - $1 million - she can bribe a state judge and affect the outcome of the trial. He fears a $25 million fine because his corporation has poisoned some kids with toxic waste. Langella and Barkin go to visit a man named Walter Curl, played by the nervous Spaulding Grey, who spends much of the movie sucking on his handkerchief. The movie was directed by Damien Harris from the first original screenplay written by Ross Thomas, the superb crime novelist, and it is a movie that feels written: The dialogue has a sleek cruelty, and the supporting characters have a quirkiness that you don't find in movies that were knitted in screenwriting class. The movie succeeds in fascinating us simply with its manner and decor, before much of the plot has been revealed - and, believe me, there is a lot of plot to reveal.
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