Double Take

(eventually)

Six days ago, during deliberations regarding possible moviegoing opportunities, an associate in a foreign city expressed offhand disgust at the prospect of going to see the film "Double Take," which appeared to explore important questions of black appearance and identity in modern American society using profanity and guns. (It should be obvious at this point that this person is not, nor ever was, a Spam-O-Matic subscriber.) This person's opinion was, of course, immediately dismissed, with a comment resembling "How can that not be a quality film? It has Orlando Jones AND Eddie Griffin! The 'Make 7-Up Yours' guy and 'Trippin'? How can you go wrong?!?"

On further reflection, however, I thought it might be interesting to figure out what necessary structure of knowledge her brain lacked to appreciate what was obviously going to be a masterwork of modern cinema. During my subsequent musings, I discovered and defined the genre of the modern black action comedy, as exemplified by films like "Bad Boys," "Money Talks," and of course "Rush Hour." I present a brief synopsis of my thinking here, in the hope that it may (a) edify all of you Spam-O-Matickers and (b) cause someone to give me a research grant so big that my secretaries all have secretaries and I can afford an entire budget line item for Sour Patch Kids.
The primary features of the modern black action comedy are:

• a title based on some common phrase (this should be obvious, with the exception of "Bait")
• two male leads, of whom at most one can be nonblack
• at least one black character who is some approximation of the classic trickster character as expounded upon in works like "Signifying Monkey" (Oscar Brown Jr.)
• a plot involving some kind of massive larceny (they ALL do)
• mistaken identities, perpetrated by or upon the main charcters
• at least some T&A, often primarily white (cf. Tea Leoni in "Bad Boys," Heather Locklear in "Money Talks")
• frank, if not especially subtle, descriptions of the idea and methods of performing race in modern American society
• rampant overdirection (Michael Bay in "Bad Boys," George Gallo in "Double Take")
• a final reel of chases and explosions whose vapidity is only exceeded by its crowd-pleasing ability

At this point, many of you are undoubtedly shaking your heads and wondering what the hell is going on (and wondering why anyone would want to actually watch films like these). But those of you who have seen two or more of the films cited above are nodding your heads in recognition. The similarities seem more than incidental. Of course, in Hollywood, success breeds slavish imitation, but the fact that films of this type have been pleasing crowds for six years and counting means that the black action comedy is rapidly becoming entrenched as a moneymaking genre, and therefore as a significant arena for analysis.

You may think, "Andrew's just going off on all the crap he reguarly views in the cinema for no good reason." Well, it's true that I have been known to do that. But as a matter of fact, there are some uncomfortable things about the black action comedy. For example: Why does modern American cinema only feel comfortable discussing the performance of race in a comedic context? Isn't this a serious issue that deserves a serious discussion? Is our laughter a way of dismissing questions on racial performance, or (more charitably) a way of getting past our discomfort? Furthermore, why is it that these frank discussions of performing race always take place in a context of violence? Do we subconsciously feel that only a cataclysm would jar us into examining our unconscious assumptions about race? Is the issue of overdirection related in any way to the above questions?

I actually do believe that these are interesting and subtle questions. I also know that I have no good answers to any of them. If any of you have views on the subject, I'd be interested to hear them, and retransmit them if you wish. Till then, let's take two.

Despite its typical-to-the-genre advertisements, "Double Take" actually has quite a lot of things distinguishing it from its black action comedy bretheren. For one thing, it's based on a film starring white people and featuring very few laughs, the obscure film noir "Across the Bridge," based on a story by Graham Greene and starring Rod Steiger. For another thing, it takes the basic black action comedy materials of gut-busting comedy and heart-stopping action and adds a brain-explodingly complex plot. For a third thing, it's doesn't provide the same level of entertainment as its predecessors in the genre.

Orlando Jones and Eddie Griffin do their level best to provide humor, fisticuffs and gunplay aplenty, but the plot runs away from writer/director George Gallo about midway through the film, leaving us with a few islands of laughter in a murky plot that doesn't finish its exposition until about five minutes before its finale. To use a food metaphor, the black action comedy is a meat-and-potatoes kind of film, and Gallo's noodling around with double-cross after double-cross eventually seems like just so much garnish and not enough main course.

The best way to discuss why the plot is so impossible is probably just to state it, as best one can: Daryl Chase (Jones), an investment banker who's dating a supermodel and is therefore primed for a downfall, starts down the slippery slope when he finds out that one of his most important clients doesn't actually, um, exist. Once he notes this to his boss, the bullets start a-flyin', and eventually Chase is suspected of three murders that he didn't commit, and someone claiming to be from the CIA tells him to flee New York City and meet him south of the border. "Huh?" the discriminating filmgoer will say, "That doesn't make a lick of sense. Why would one of Langley's finest tell Chase to go to Mexico for protection? And why would Chase listen to him?"

However, it makes even less sense when Freddy Tiffany, a seeming bum who's been shadowing Chase for a couple days, starts being exceptionally helpful in getting Chase to Mexico. Is Tiffany who he eventually says he is? Is the CIA guy who he says he is? Without giving too much away, every single person in Gallo's godforsaken plot besides Chase's supermodel girlfriend is not what he or she seems. Obviously, this film is meant to be some kind of parable on the nature of appearance and identity, but this is an embarasse of metaphorical riches, and it overwhelms the narrative. Would "King Lear" have been better if the eponymous monarch had fifteen scheming daughters instead of three?

By far the best moments in this film feature Jones and Griffin, and when Gallo settles down and lets these two do their thing, they do it quite well indeed. They effectively joust with each other's perceptions of how to "act black," deflate each other's assumptions, do most of the actual work for Gallo's appearance/identity conceit, and eventually grudgingly earn each other's respect and trust in the process. Both men are also flat-out funny, even though Gallo has not written an excess of funny lines for them, which becomes especially apparent when he steals a malt-liquor joke from "Money Talks" and manages to screw it up in the process.

Griffin has a certain sweeping extravagance in both his delivery and timing that never fails to provoke a chuckle, and he manages to make his various reversals of temper seem almost believable. However, Jones is the real star here, proving adept at everything from smell takes to astonished denials to cocky swaggers to a parody of "black" speech so vicious it's almost not funny. Almost. His energy and acting acumen distinguish everything he does, and it is to be hoped that he gets the chance to star in an actual well-made film sometime in the future.

"Double Take" is not an unenjoyable film, for the simple reason that there are a couple of true comic stars at work, but in the final analysis Gallo basically wastes their talents on machinations and schemes which are more confusing than effective. If the film had (let's say) eight fewer reversals of identity and more Jones and Griffin, it could take a place of some distinction in this young genre. As it stands, however, a "Double Take" is one more take than you'll probably need.

TRULY POINTLESS MARGINAL NOTES PRESENTED FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT

At one point in the film discussed above, Gallo has Griffin and Jones discuss and dance to a rap song with an especially sinuous, infectious beat. Griffin asserts that the beat sounds like "old-school Run-DMC," which Jones counters by calling it akin to "Grandmaster Flash." The only problem with this dialogue is that none of it makes sense in the context of the song, which sounds very much like a Proyecto Uno joint (possibly with help from the Beatnuts on production). In fact, I don't even know who actually wrote the song, and I am willing to bet George Gallo $1 that it's a Proyecto Uno song (because, apparently, he doesn't know either). Step up, 2G.

Update: The song in question is "Return of the Tres," by a group called Delinquent Habits. I mention this only because it is a topic of considerable interest to strangers who e-mail me. (I love strangers!) Though the "Double Take" soundtrack has disappeared from the face of the earth, you can buy the album with "Return of the Tres" on it here. I aim to serve.

Thanks to the lovely and talented Ellen Malone, it has come to my attention that Sean Connery's delivery of the line "You're the man now, dog!" in the previews for "Finding Forrester" is unintentionally hilarious. Here are some more sentences I would like to see Connery shout in his inimitably gruff accent for my amusement:

"Pass that spliff over here, G!"

"I'm all about the bling bling."

"You can't let your shorty play you like that, Goldfinger."

Can you tell I didn't write this for publication? Because I can.

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