In this movie, the CIA is run like K-Mart. Here’s one example. When the terrorists go to Chris Rock’s hotel to get his phone records the concierge refuses because “the records are sealed.” Hmmm, how could the terrorists get around this security measure? Cleverly, they beat up one of the clerks and make the other one unclasp and open the manila envelope containing the records.
But here’s my favorite scene. Chris Rock is sent out to pretend to be his identical twin brother at his brother’s apartment under the pretext that the CIA want to see if he can fool the doorman. Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock both buy this pretext, but the real reason is to see who comes to assassinate him. As Chris Rock walks out onto his balcony, the assassin watches from a building across the street. Quiz time. You’re an assassin. The first part of your plan is to stand in a building across the street from your target and wait for him to appear on the balcony. The second part of your plan should be A) To shoot him with a sniper rifle B) To detonate a bomb placed on the balcony or C) To leave your perch, go downstairs, cross the street, go up to your target’s apartment, sneak up to a point about fifteen feet behind him, scream, charge and try to stab him with a knife.
If you answered C) you should pitch a movie to Bruckheimer. There are two other funny things about this scene. One is that the CIA keep talking on the radio about how everything is ok because Rock is well protected. It turns out that his protection consists of three agents sitting in a van in front of his sixth-floor apartment who don’t even notice the shabbily dressed, knife-wielding, Slavic gentleman who comes out of the building across the street and goes into Rock’s apartment building just after Rock has appeared on the balcony.
The other funny thing about the scene is that the terrorists in question are going through all of this to procure a nuclear bomb. It’s just kind of a leap. “Well Slava, I think we’ve gotten pretty good with these knives. Let’s try our hands at nuclear weaponry.” How about taking a crack and really big knives first, then maybe crossbows and eventually firearms?
That’s sort of indicative of the big flaw in this movie, which is that the filmmakers aren’t ready to handle nuclear weapons themselves. For example, there’s this scene in which Rock, posing as a buyer, uses his computer to download the codes needed to arm the nuke. Jonny knows way more about this sort of thing (nukes) than I do, but one of the good things about Soviet and American nukes is that they are really, really difficult to set off. [Ed Note: Jonny knows better than to watch a fucking Bruckheimer film…] So while Rock is downloading the codes, one of the sellers says “cut it out, an electric pulse would detonate the bomb!!” OK, then who gives a fuck about the codes? Later in the movie the terrorists are basically foiled because they can’t set off the bomb without the code, but I didn’t think “”why not just use a cell phone to make an electric pulse.” That’s because at one point Hopkins and Rock are in a car chase and are afraid that the bomb will go off from being knocked around too much. So I was thinking “just take the thing down a street with a lot of potholes.”
I could go on but I’ll sum it up this way. Bad Company was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Joel Schumacher.
The movie has a couple of funny parts so I’ll give credit where it’s due. One is where Rock says “I’ll beat you so bad you’ll be the only guy in heaven with a wheel chair.” I forgot what the other one was.
Regular Ratings
- Film Overall: 3
- Direction: 3
- Story: 2
- Acting: 6
- Rewatchability: 3
Ruthless Ratings
- Number of times you wished you were drunk: 8
- Number of times the movie was paused to do something else: 0
- Number of times something else was done without pausing the movie: 2
- Number of times you laughed: 7
- Number of times you were laughing at something that was intended to be funny: 3