Posted: 06/08/2002

Bad Company

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

Stop reading this review and go see Bad Company!

You’re still here?

OK, fine. I will do this the hard way. Bad Company, the new film by director Joel Schumacher (Flawless, 8mm, Batman & Robin), is an excellent movie when you just want to be entertained by an action picture with a better than average story. It stars two of the better actors working today, Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal, Hearts In Atlantis, Meet Joe Black) and Chris Rock (Down to Earth, Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob). Obviously, their styles are extremely different—but when teamed together in Bad Company, the collaboration very much works.

Hopkins is Gaylord Hayes, a CIA agent in a bidding war to acquire a stolen Russian suitcase atomic weapon. Rock is Jake Hayes, a NY freelance ticket agent. Their paths cross because Hayes is the twin brother (separated at birth) of Hopkins’ murdered partner. The deal is going to go down in 10 days so there is limited time to turn a college-dropout hustler, Hayes, into the Rhodes-Scholar-antiquities-expert-CIA agent that was his brother. It is a very serious story with a humorous way of going down the road. I enjoyed the characters so much that I am willing to suspend my ‘Rule of Plot Holes,’ which would normally have me ranting. For this I give credit to Hopkins and Rock who constantly kept me entertained. Bad Company is a fun trip to the movies—and that is why we go.

But I do have a few ‘Notes on Plot Holes’ to the first time writer Gary Goodman and his partner David Himmelstein: How did the CIA know their guy had a twin? How did they find him and get so much information on him in roughly 12 hours? When the story moves to the USA, why isn’t the FBI involved? The deal wasn’t guaranteed to go down in 10 days, but sometime in the next 10 days. Did our characters just get lucky that the sellers didn’t call in 3 days? And why didn’t the sophisticated sellers of this bomb not see roughly 50 people watching their open-air meeting? And why didn’t Oakes tell Hayes about Nicole? And how did Nicole get into Hayes’ hotel room? And why did they just let her leave? She works for CNN and could have blown their cover way too easily. How come there is so much automatic weapons fire without our good guys getting hit? And why is Brooke Smith the girlfriend of Anthony Hopkins? There has to be 30 years difference in their ages. And Hopkins’ character kept saying that in his business, you can have no attachments. And what’s with Hopkins flashing his CIA ID? He does it two or three times and no one takes the time to look at it. It’s not a badge, but everyone seems to just believe he is who he is.

Hank Yuloff owns a specialty advertising company in Los Angeles and is such a fan of Hopkins and Rock, he obviously let it color his judgment. Hey, we don’t pay these reviewers… They are just movie fans, like you.

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