For reasons that are still fuzzy even by the time final credits roll for Double Take, Wall Street hotshot Daryl Chase (Orlando Jones), framed for both financial wrongdoings and murder, heads to Mexico after exchanging identities with fast-talking Freddie (Eddie Griffin), who is either the key to his freedom or the engineer of his demise. The incomprehensible and supposedly madcap twists and turns that follow make mindless buddy flicks like Rush Hour seem giants of brainy plotting in comparison. The film even features one of those unintentionally hysterical moments in which the villain stops to explain the entire charade to characters who supposedly already know what's going on--and it still doesn't make any sense. None of this would matter, of course, if everything was propelled by some sort of internal screwball logic that had it playfully bouncing over its plot holes. But writer-director George Gallo can't streamline his potential assets--Jones's suave likeability and Griffin's take-no-prisoners crassness--into something that moves. Some of the throwaway comic asides work ("You keep campaigning for this ass-whuppin', you gonna get elected"), but every single one of the extended bits is painfully strained and overdone. Griffin, in particular, becomes desperately obnoxious, and saddling him with clumsy comments on race and social status in a comedy that is ultimately about neither doesn't help. Try 48 Hours instead. --Steve Wiecking
2.
DOUBLE TAKE opens in Hitchcock fashion with a Manhattan businessman finding himself on the run; He is suspected of illegal activities, and has to prove his innocence while being pursued by the authorities. Hitchcock's classic version of this story is NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959). However, in spite of its thriller pedigree, DOUBLE TAKE is something else. Writer-director George Gallo has taken the classic elements, filtered them through the 1990s action and buddy films and produced a frenetic comedy built around the volatile chemistry of Orlando Jones and Eddie Griffin. Jones has the Cary Grant part--he is Daryl Chase, a Wall Street investment banker dealing in international accounts who becomes the fall guy when a Mexican client is revealed as the front man for a drug cartel. Griffin has the Eve Marie Saint part, but his Freddy Tiffany is no ice-cool Hitchcock blonde. Instead, he's the fast-talking streetwise hustler who aids and abets Chase as he is pursued by the police, the FBI, the CIA, and the DEA. DOUBLE TAKE swallows up the clichés of the innocent-on-the-run movie and the buddy movie, then--with Jones and Griffin trading quips and identities--throws them pell-mell on the screen in one long hilarious stream.
3.
Successful New York investment banker Daryl Chase (ORLANDO JONES) suddenly on the run and having to switch identities with low-life petty thief Freddy Tiffany (EDDIE GRIFFIN). Until now, Daryl's led a charmed life. However, everything is turned upside down when he is framed for laundering millions for a Mexican drug cartel. Wanted by the FBI, and seeing no other alternative, he makes a run for the border to find the one man who can clear his name. Comedy and chaos collide when, to his horror, he discovers that his new alias, Freddy, is much higher on the fugitive food chain of Most Wanted Criminals than he is.
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