Double Take

Bomb Rating: 

If the airline industry were run anything like Hollywood, planes would drop from the sky like bird crap, because stewardesses would be trying to fly them and baggage handlers would be designing the engines.

If the airline industry were run anything like Hollywood, planes would drop from the sky like bird crap, because stewardesses would be trying to fly them and baggage handlers would be designing the engines.

This is simply my way of asking: How the hell did this script ever get written? I'm not sure what writer/director George Gallo is qualified to do, but writing clearly isn't one of those things. I suggest taking a shot at compound sentences before moving on to detailed plots, George. Every important moment in the film's story is revealed by one character explaining to another something to the effect of: "I'm actually an agent for the FBI" or "I'm actually working for somebody else." It must happen ten times, and suddenly a character who's been acting one way begins to act differently.

This must be the only way the film can pretend it's revealing something, because the "mystery" elements in the story are barely enough to challenge a toddler. Investment banker Daryl Chase (Orlando Jones) gets caught in a ridiculous situation where he's nearly killed, and then framed for the murder of two cops. The movie tries to portray Daryl as an incredibly smart guy, yet he's the only one who can't figure out immediately that the CIA guys who show up are complete fakes, and that thief Freddy Tiffany (Eddie Griffin) can't possibly be who he says he is, because he's always showing up at exactly the right moment to help Daryl out.

You'd have to be stupid not to know that the CIA guys aren't real and that Freddy isn't simply a jive-talking thief. For whatever reason, the film chooses to illuminate this difference between black people who have assimilated into the upper-class world and those who have not. The fact that this is only a pretext for really bad plotting makes it no less grossly exploitative.

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