Dignified Oscar-winner
Anthony Hopkins tries the buddy action-comedy on for size with this typically slick and bombastic offering from producer
Jerry Bruckheimer. Hopkins stars as Gaylord Oakes, a CIA spy attempting -- along with his partner, Kevin Pope (
Chris Rock) -- to secure a suitcase-sized nuclear bomb in Prague from a Russian black marketer (
Peter Stormare). Just as the partners discover that another bidder for the device exists, they are ambushed and Pope is killed trying to protect Oakes. Desperate for the bomb's owners and their attackers to believe that Pope is still alive so that the deal can commence in ten days time, Oakes recruits his late partner's long-lost twin, ticket-scalping chess hustler Jake Hayes (also played by Rock), a small-time criminal who never knew he had a brother. Offered a sizable payday and the admiration of his student nurse girlfriend, Hayes agrees to undergo vigorous training and dangerous situations as he impersonates his brother and helps Oakes to remove the nuclear threat, but the new partners clash in every way possible, from personal discipline to musical taste. Meanwhile, the assassin of the real Kevin Pope sends another cadre of killers after the agent he believes is still alive. Bad Company co-stars
Kerry Washington,
Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Gabriel Macht, and Matthew Marsh. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide