The Double: Richard Gere, Fire Your Agent

Image Ent.

Somebody's not what they seem: Grace (left) and Gere.

Details

Opens Fri., Nov. 4. Rated PG-13. 98 minutes.

Related Content

• Cops Deaths: Could Procedural Changes Have Made Difference for Trooper Tony Radulescu?
  April 10, 2012
• Comment of the Day: Fix Our Broken Immigration System
  May 2, 2012
• Test Case (Still Fear the "Man," I Guess)
  March 8, 2012
• There's No Eating in Safe House, but Tobin Frost Would Appreciate Al Boccalino
  March 2, 2012
• If Your Mom Killed Federal Prosecutor Tom Wales, Turn Her In
  October 14, 2011

More About

• Michael Brandt
• Topher Grace
• Richard Gere
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Movie Stars

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Michael Brandt's post–Cold War spy film is grade-B hokum, but it's not without its occasional generic thrills. Apparently more adept at staging individual set pieces than he is at building tension, creating believable characters, or stringing together a coherent narrative, Brandt places his best sequence, a successful jailbreak–turned–grisly murder, near the film's beginning, and he at least keeps the action coming. Which is fortunate because everything else about the film, which involves the odd-couple pairing of grizzled, out-of-retirement CIA agent Paul Shepherdson (Richard Gere) and Harvard hotshot/FBI rookie Ben Geary (Topher Grace) in order to catch the newly resurfaced Russian assassin known only as "Cassius," is downright risible. Whether it's the clumsy use of flashbacks, the air of manufactured portentousness, or the completely unbelievable casting of Grace in a role that requires a certain authority utterly lacking in the actor's performance, almost every move seems a misstep. Brandt's worst blunder is to give away one of the film's biggest reveals early on, a strategy that not only eliminates a key element of suspense but forces the filmmaker to pile on a series of more and more outrageous twists at the end.