Richard Gere has always benefited from his squinty-eyed slickness, lacing good-guy parts with unnerving oiliness while bringing suave verve to his dirtier characters. The spy thriller "The Double" gives him one of his better roles in late middle age: a decorated CIA vet threatened with professional embarrassment if, as a hot-shot young FBI agent (Topher Grace) insists, the Russian assassin he claims to have killed years ago is still alive and back at work.
Director Michael Brandt, who wrote the screenplay with Derek Haas, is after a kind of fun-house espionage yarn in which loyalties are suspect, identities are fluid and generational differences make for inherently tension-filled exchanges. But there's a sanded-off, textbook creativity to "The Double" that forsakes rich cloak-and-dagger textures for generic twists, hackneyed flashbacks and telegraphed moments of peril.
The movie's few pleasures, though, do belong to Gere, who makes the most of his preening caginess as a spook thrust back into the cold. Grace, though, comes off more whiny than tantalizingly adversarial.
Eventually the movie seems to just give up, turning into the kind of guns-and-chase showdown more befitting a run-of-the-mill cop yarn than a tale of international intrigue.
"The Double." MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some disturbing images and language. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes. At selected theaters.
Director Michael Brandt, who wrote the screenplay with Derek Haas, is after a kind of fun-house espionage yarn in which loyalties are suspect, identities are fluid and generational differences make for inherently tension-filled exchanges. But there's a sanded-off, textbook creativity to "The Double" that forsakes rich cloak-and-dagger textures for generic twists, hackneyed flashbacks and telegraphed moments of peril.
Eventually the movie seems to just give up, turning into the kind of guns-and-chase showdown more befitting a run-of-the-mill cop yarn than a tale of international intrigue.
"The Double." MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some disturbing images and language. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes. At selected theaters.
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