The Double is a textbook example of how talented writers don’t always make great directors. Brandt, with co-writer Derek Haas, scripted Wanted and 3:10 to Yuma, two fun genre pictures, elevated by their performers and directors Timur Bekmambetov and James Mangold, respectively. Here Brandt and Haas have put together a boilerplate spy thriller with an obvious twist that thankfully gets revealed in the first act so we don’t have to wait for it. Richard Gere is CIA and Topher Grace is FBI, chasing a Cold War-era Russian agent in Washington DC. Grace gets a moment or two to use his comic skills, while Gere, who can play dangerous (see Internal Affairs), just looks uncomfortable most of the time. Brandt simply undercooks the movie, with less imagination in the visuals than a typical episode of Homeland.
This article appears in Feb 2-8, 2012.