Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

The Double Blu-ray Movie Review

Spy versus Spy versus Spy versus . . .

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 17, 2012

Viewers today are so accustomed to "twists", "reveals" and "spoilers" that everyone assumes it's supposed to be a Big Secret that the retired CIA man played by Richard Gere in The Double is really . . . a Soviet assassin. (Oops!) But the trailer discloses it, hints are dropped early in the film, and Gere's character confesses his identity less than half an hour in. And did I mention that the title of the film is The Double?

As it happens, screenwriters Michael Brandt (who directed) and Derek Haas (who co-produced) always intended the audience to know the character's dual identity. Their script originally opened with the backstory now seen in flashbacks, and it wasn't until the editing stage that they decided the narrative would have more energy if they started in the present. Either way, the story isn't about who Gere's character is; it's about who's trying to flush him out and why. As with many espionage tales, things get even murkier and more disturbing once the original question has been answered.

Brandt and Haas sold the script for The Double to MGM, then had to reclaim it when that studio filed for bankruptcy and was parceled out among various buyers. In the meantime, they achieved enough notoriety with their scripts for 3:10 to Yuma and Wanted to obtain funding to make The Double themselves, albeit without major studio backing for a wide release. During its three-week sojourn in just 45 theaters, the film barely registered. Most critics panned it; my colleague, Brian Orndorf, called it "ridiculously convoluted", and that was probably the nicest thing in his review. Few saw what I did, which is a diverting genre throwback about people for whom lying isn't just a technique but the essence of who they are. Now that Image Entertainment is releasing the film in an affordable, first-rate Blu-ray presentation, you can judge for yourself.

The Double opens with two incidents that appear to be related, though it's not clear how. The first is an illegal border crossing from Mexico into the U.S. that's anything but routine, because the group includes Russians. The second is the murder of U.S. Senator Darden (Edward Austin Kelly), a Russian supporter with substantial business interests in its new economy. Darden was most recently seen on TV debating a Senate colleague, Friedman (Hugh Weaver), who urged that Russia has quietly grown into a new threat while America has been distracted by the Middle East. The manner in which Darden was killed triggers alarms all the way to the top of the Department of Homeland Security, because it's identical to the methods of a Soviet assassin thought to have died long ago. Code name: Cassius.

CIA Director Highland (Martin Sheen) turns to retired operative Paul Shepherdson (Gere), who spent twenty years tracking Cassius and the six killers he trained and controlled in a group dubbed "the Cassius Seven". Shepherdson believes he successfully eliminated everyone except the head man himself, but he's also certain that Senator Darden's murder is the work of a copycat, not Cassius. A seasoned viewer would already suspect the reason for Shepherdson's instant certainty, even if the filmmakers were trying to hide it (which they aren't). But then Shephardson's old boss tells him something startling: One of the Cassius Seven assassins, known only as "Brutus", survived his injuries and has been held in a secure federal facility ever since.

Another surprise awaits Shepherdson at his first briefing, where he finds the FBI sitting cheek by jowl with the CIA, courtesy of the new Homeland Security regimen. In particular, there's a young FBI hotshot named Ben Geary (Topher Grace), who wrote his thesis on Cassius and is obsessed with every detail relating to the shadowy executioner. Shepherdson and Geary lock horns almost immediately, but theory has to be put on hold while they visit Brutus (True Blood's Stephen Moyer, with a thick accent and a lot of facial scars). It's to Brutus that Shepherdson directly reveals his true identity. From that point on the film becomes an elaborate cat-and-mouse game between Geary and Shepherdson, as the former tries to find Cassius, and the latter tries to look like he's doing so, all the while misdirecting the search. (Brandt and Haas have said that one of their inspirations was the 1987 Kevin Costner film No Way Out.)

Gere says in the extras that actors are attracted to characters who lie constantly, and certainly one's enjoyment of The Double depends in large part on whether one is intrigued by scenes where different agendas are in conflict but not all the characters know it. Some of these scenes appear obvious, such as the domestic moments, when Geary brings his new "partner" home for dinner with his wife, Natalie (Odette Yustman), and children, after which Shepherdson begins urging Geary to drop out of the Cassius pursuit. But is Shepherdson afraid of Geary's acumen or concerned that he'll have to kill him and deprive the family of a husband and father? Shepherdson repeatedly describes Cassius as a ruthless killer without conscience or remorse, but as Gere himself observes, by making such observations about himself, Shepherdson is really confessing the opposite.

In any case, Geary is not to be dissuaded, and he accompanies Shepherdson as they track down leads from Homeland Security on the Russian group that entered through Mexico. This brings them to a Russian prostitute, Amber (a brief but memorable appearance by Castle's Stana Katic), and then to a deadly foe known as Bozlovski (Tamer Hassan), who is only too happy to acknowledge that he has "played" Cassius from time to time. But is he responsible for Senator Darden's murder, and if so, why?

By the end of the film, most things have been revealed, and nothing has been resolved. Another film that Brandt and Haas have cited as inspiration is Three Days of the Condor, and anyone familiar with Sydney Pollack's masterpiece of Seventies paranoia will remember that it concludes with a neat wrap-up of the incident that sent Robert Redford's analyst running for his life—but nothing has changed. That's arguably how The Double ends, but much depends on your interpretation of the last scene. Mine isn't optimistic.

The Double Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Double was shot by top cinematographer Jeffrey Kimball, whose work extends from an impressive set of films for Tony Scott (Top Gun, True Romance and Beverly Hills Cop II) to a trio for John Woo (Mission Impossible 2, Windtalkers and Paycheck) to Stallone's The Expendables. On their commentary track, Brandt and Haas note that having Kimble as their DP allowed them to attract a first-rate crew, even though their film was low-budget, because everyone wants to work with Kimball.

Brandt told Kimball that he wanted to "feel" the film, and he didn't care if that meant elements in the frame were out of focus or the frame was dark. Kimball gave Brandt what he wanted, but he and his crew were too professional not to deliver a glossy image at the same time. The Double "feels" like it was shot on film, in large part because Kimball knows how to shoot images with a sense of texture, e.g., by using smoke in the air to provide diffusion for the light. (The commentary talks about this in detail.) But he also knows how to deliver a detailed and fine-grained image with deep blacks, appropriate color delineation (corrected via a digital intermediate), and a palette that shifts easily between chilly blues for government facilities and warmer ambers and browns for life outside. All of this is well presented on Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, with no signs of inappropriate digital tampering by way of high frequency filtering, artificial sharpening or compression artifacts.

The Double Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS lossless presentation of The Double's 5.1 track is extremely impressive. Listen, for example, to the scene where Martin Sheen's CIA chief and Richard Gere's retired operative enter CIA headquarters, walk through a corridor and enter a briefing room. The sounds of the environments they pass through envelop you and move with the briskly pacing pair. Throughout the film, small sounds appropriate to the scene are placed off-camera (a door closing, creaks, river flow, traffic, etc.) to create the sense of the larger world in which these operatives have to move and work. An elaborate car chase ("battle" would be more appropriate) in the latter part of the film is as kinetic sonically as it is visually. The score by John Debney (Iron Man 2, The Passion of the Christ) plays with appropriate range and intensity.

The Double Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer-Director Michael Brandt and Writer-Producer Derek Haas: Brandt and Haas provide a wealth of information about the background of the script and especially the changes it underwent during production and editing. Brandt is particularly interesting in detailing the contributions of cinematographer Jeffrey Kimball and pointing out numerous shots that were enhanced by visual effects in ways that aren't obvious (e.g., allowing locations in Detroit to substitute convincingly for Paris and Washington, D.C.). The partners tell numerous stories from the set, many illustrating the challenges of working under time pressures and budget constraints, and they are unstinting in their gratitude for the support of a thoroughly professional cast and crew on a film that wasn't offering anyone a big payday.


• Producer Interviews (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1; 7:49): So denominated on the features menu, this is a general featurette (but an unusually good one) containing interviews with Gere, Grace, Moyer, Brandt and Haas. Their comments are brief but informative. The entire discussion is rife with major spoilers and should be avoided until after watching the film.


• Trailer (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1; 2:26): As noted in the introduction, the consensus was that the trailer gave too much away. But all it really does is explain the film's basic premise.

The Double Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

To return to my colleague's review, yes, The Double is "convoluted", but audiences expect that from their espionage stories, especially after 24 (for which The Double's plot line would have supplied material for maybe four episodes, at most) and slickly assembled potboilers like Salt or even a cerebrally classy one like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. If ridiculous convolution were automatically a flaw, the cluttered alternate universes of Middle Earth, Hogwarts, Gotham City and, lest we forget, the Galactic Empire, wouldn't have the hordes of obsessively devoted fans populating site after site, filling up numerous threads, and buying multiple versions of the films. The Double isn't a perfect film, but it's an interesting one that, as I discovered while rewatching portions for this review, reveals additional layers on subsequent viewings, which isn't something I can say of everything I've reviewed here. The film is recommended, and the Blu-ray is highly recommended.