Bad Company (May 31/02)

Bad Company, the latest mindless action movie from super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, essentially scrapes the bottom of the barrel for this dying genre. A horrible lead performance by Chris Rock, combined with some flashy but distracting direction by Joel Schumacher, equals a mess that makes Armageddon look like The French Connection.

In Bad Company, Rock assumes two roles: The straight-laced CIA agent Michael and the street-smart hustler Jake. As the film opens, Michael is in Prague working with Anthony Hopkins on an arms deal. But he's soon shot dead by his competition, though his death remains unknown to his assassins. Hopkins and his team quickly decide that the best solution is to recruit Michael's indentical twin brother, as the arms dealers won't work with anyone else. Jake is initially skeptical, but finds he can't say no after receiving a generous monetary offer. Since the next meeting with the dealer is but eight days away, the CIA folks must train Jake to act like his brother (leading to several instances of cliched culture clash).

Bad Company is inept on so many levels, it's almost impossible to know where to start - though Rock's incredibly bad performance is certainly the most obvious place. While Rock's never exactly been a master thespian, at least in his previous attempts at acting he came off as likable. It helps that in his most successful roles he wasn't asked to do much more than drop a one-liner every now and then (Nurse Betty being the most prominent example of this). But here, given a serious leading role and asked to perform opposite no less than Anthony Hopkins, Rock fails and fails miserably. This is arguably the worst lead performance in a mainstream movie ever. And yes, I am taking both Carrot Top and Madonna into consideration. While Rock does have a scant few moments where he's actually not too bad (most come near the beginning, when he's hustling folks for money during chess games), once the movie's plot kicks in, he's as out of place as I would be at an antiques sale. His response to virtually everything that happens to him is to scream (and scream loudly). Never once does he actually appear to be acting; he always looks as though he's either reading cue cards off camera or struggling to remember his poorly written lines. He just seems uncomfortable, as though he knew he was awful and he was just waiting for someone to fire him.

As for Hopkins, though he's still far better than Rock could ever hope to be, this is certainly one of his worst performances. He just looks embarrassed, and who can blame him? He's often said that he's in acting just for the money, and that's never been truer than it is here. The rest of the actors don't really make much of an impact, though most supporting characters are far more charismatic than Rock could ever hope to be (and their screen time is quite limited). Peter Stormare essentially reprises his 8mm role as a sleazy merchant (instead of illegal porn, he's selling illegal arms), while Series 7 star Brooke Smith tries her darndest to bring some depth to her barely-written character.

Bad Company's been directed by Joel Schumacher, and this just proves what most people have known all along: Keep this man as far away from a camera as possible. Not content with having ruined the Batman franchise, he's moved onto cajoling terrible performances out of Oscar-winning actors. But besides the lack of depth in a single character, Bad Company doesn't even work as an escapist action movie. It's PG-13 rating guarantees that nobody is going to get brutally murdered and though a lot of people are gunned down, it's always from a distance. There should have been a note at the end of the credits that read, "No squibs were harmed in the making of this movie."

Besides the lack of violence, the film contains so many poorly constructed moments of supposed suspense or excitement, that it feels like it would be more at home being mocked by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys. Consider an early sequence that finds Rock's character under attack by an assassin. The hit man has quietly snuck into Rock's posh apartment, and surreptitiously slithers toward the bathroom where Rock is urinating. Though he would have easily been able to stab Rock in the back with his rather large knife, this assassin decides to yell at the top of his lungs while running towards his victim - giving Rock ample time to mount a last-minute defense. There are many more idiotic moments like that spread out through the far-too-long running time of 120 minutes.

Bad Company was delayed in the wake of September 11th due to a plot development in the final act, but it's easy enough to wish it had just been buried. It'll likely end Rock's attempt to break out of comedy roles (as well it should), while Schumacher will hopefully be relegated to lower budget films like Tigerland (which actually wasn't that bad). As for poor Anthony Hopkins, let's just hope he was paid a lot of money.