Jake is a street-smart dropout whose girlfriend has had enough while his brother Pope was a suave, top-level agent whose girlfriend also left but now wants him back, setting the scene for one hilarious encounter.
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 Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Chris Rock, Anthony Hopkins, Gabriel Macht
Running time: 117 min
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As Jake goes undercover playing not only his brother's character Kevin Pope, but his brother's undercover character as well, Michael Turner, the scenes develop into a highly amusing action movie.
Rock and Hopkins combine well together. Hopkins, playing the old and wise agent, has to manipulate his new charge and push him into situations he would rather not ever be in. Rock's quips and facial expressions are brilliant at times and certainly serve to gloss over some of the more far-fetched scenes.
But I must say I was still a bit disappointed in Rock's performance. I have seen clips of some of his comedy shows and the man is hilarious. Even on some chat shows where he appears as a guest, his spontaneous quips have left the talk show host gasping for air after laughing so hard.
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Anthony Hopkins, Gabriel Macht & Chris Rock |
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In this movie, though, things seem a bit forced most of the time. It was as if he was not given enough freedom to develop the role spontaneously but had to stick too rigidly to the dialogue in a script which is by no means bad but is certainly not the best that has been written.
Hopkins is convincing in any role. He is certainly one of the most polished actors of our time and seems to be quite at home, no matter what kind of character he has to play. And he does Agent Oakes quite brilliantly, but once again I think it is the script that lets him down a bit.
Try as I might, I just cannot find it very convincing when a grey-haired man of at least 60 calmly continues chewing his gum in the middle of numerous gunfights. Perhaps Hopkins adopted this very American idiosyncrasy after he became a US citizen in 2000. Or maybe he thought chewing gum while blasting away at bad guys would convince viewers that he was a very American agent, despite the very British accent.
All that aside, Bad Company is a highly entertaining move that, thankfully, does not take itself too seriously. It will never be right up there with the best that Hopkins has done, and I believe we are still going to see a lot of really good stuff from Rock in the future. But Bad Company is certainly worth seeing.
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