Review: Audiences shouldn’t keep this ‘Company’

Geoff Carter

Friday, June 7, 2002 | 10:33 a.m.

'Bad Company'

Grade: *

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Chris Rock, Kerry Washington and Peter Stormare.

Screenplay: Jason Richman and Michael Browning.

Director: Joel Schumacher.

Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, some sensuality and language.

Running time: 111 minutes.

Movie times: http://www.vegas.com/movies/

We can now safely call for the head of director Joel Schumacher. He has no less than 10 terrible films in his repertoire: "Batman Forever," "Batman and Robin," "8MM," "Flatliners," "St. Elmo's Fire," "Dying Young," "Falling Down," "A Time to Kill," "D.C. Cab" and now "Bad Company," his most recent effort to erase any confidence we might have gained in his abilities from the still-durable vampire yarn "The Lost Boys."

We should have known: The man really does want to suck our blood.

To be fair to Schumacher (sure, why not?), half of "Bad Company" belongs to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who remakes his own "Enemy of the State" with diminished entertainment value and ham-fisted moralizing. In "State," the hot young black comedian (Will Smith) and his crusty old white mentor (Gene Hackman) try to evade the dirty-tricks division of our own government; in "Company," what are for all intents and purposes the same characters save the world from Euro-terrorists. Some would call it patriotism; I call it fraud, and I want Bruckheimer to do his American duty and give my two hours back.

Chris Rock plays two roles in "Company" -- that of a straight-laced CIA operative, and his underachieving twin brother Jake. The operative is murdered early in the film, and his partner Oakes (Anthony Hopkins) recruits Jake to fill in for him. The two men have nine days to recreate Jake in the operative's image to negotiate a deal with the Russian Mafia, led here by "Fargo's" Peter Stormare. The training takes and Jake negotiates the deal, but a double-cross fouls the plan and -- gee whiz! -- before you know it, a briefcase-sized nuclear device finds its way to New York.

I feel as badly for Disney, which dealt this mess, as I do for the CIA: Recent headlines have made both entities look less-than-efficient, but this movie makes them into bumbling fools. The plot holes are so large that not even Rock's admittedly funny motormouth can fill them, and Hopkins just looks tired from the ordeal. Not a single supporting actor, even the menacing/whimsical Stormare, registers with you; motivations are as muddy gray as the film's color palatte.

There are few laughs in "Bad Company," most of them from Rock. He's yet to find his feature-film speed -- a real shame, for a man who can talk his way through pretty much anything. It's a shame that Schumacher and Bruckheimer couldn't furnish him with more of a challenge, but what do you expect of headless men?