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Shoddy Double

It could be argued that the recent woes of the United States are due, at least in part, to the demise of the Soviet Union. Without an external threat to unite and define us, our country lost its focus and has slowly drifted through various intercine squabbles and pointless foreign adventures. While the ultimate result of this lack of focus remains to be seen in the geopolitical arena, there is no question that Hollywood has suffered greatly. Gone is the mighty KGB, the perfect pre-packaged antagonist, leaving conspiracy-thriller writers to work with some quasi-governmental agency or malicious international corporate entity invented from whole cloth, the defeat of which just doesn't touch the same nerve for the audience. "The Double" attempts to turn back the clock through its judicious use of the word 'former', delivering a movie that could best be summarized as, "a former CIA agent chases a former KGB agent sent to spy on the United States by the former Soviet Union". And, of course, there's the brash young agent brought on to help. The problem is that none of this really feels important anymore.

None of this is helped by the fact that both of the leads - Richard Gere ("Chicago") and Topher Grace ("In Good Company") as the former CIA and brash young agent, respectively - don't bring much to the table. Gere, who was never a particularly interesting actor in the first place, barely bothers to rise above the level of giving a line reading and Topher Grace, who has survived largely on the strength of boyish charm, just doesn't have the depth or charisma to carry things on his own. They are also not helped by a lazy screenplay that feels like it's been sitting on the back of some studio's vault since before the Berlin Wall fell. Written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas (the team behind "Wanted" and "2 Fast 2 Furious"), the script barely makes an effort. In a world full of various iterations of "CSI", the audience knows that placing a weapon in a dead person's hand isn't sufficient to fool a team of forensics investigators, and in the modern world, let's face it, hospitals probably have surveillance cameras.

Brandt also tries his hand at directing and does a functional, if not exciting, job. Like the other elements of the film, he gets the job done, being neither memorably good nor memorably bad.

Rather than being engrossed in the plot or being surprised by the inevitable (and not remotely surprising) reveal, the biggest question that keeps springing to mind during "The Double" is: Why did this get made and why did these actors sign on to it? Perhaps there is a conspiracy afoot after all.