Bad Company

You are now entering Cliche City. The bad guys are East European. They never hit anyone when firing 5000-rounds-a-second, while the good guys are dead accurate with their pesky revolvers.

Hero 2 returns to his hotel room in Prague to find a devastating black babe in the shower. One day, the girl in the shower is going to be ugly, which means it'll be a comedy. Maybe this is a comedy. Chris Rock is funny, isn't he?

Hero 1 says, "Learn this stuff by 0500 hours."

Hero 2 says, "Or what?"

Hero 1 says, "I'll kill you."

Hero 1 is a CIA agent. He's English and way over retirement age. His name is Oakes, as in Oatcakes, and is played by none other than a Welsh knight. He could have been played by just about anybody, but to give the film a touch of class, Sir Tony of Hopkins has been torn away from impersonating the cannibal Lecter to perform a service for producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Chris Rock was best in Dogma, as a fallen angel, and in Nurse Betty, as an apprentice assassin. Ever since, he's bombed. His comedic style is New York savvy, a scammin' black dude with an eye for the main chance. Here, he plays two parts - a sophisticated antique dealer/CIA operative, and a chess playing hustler with a lucrative sideline as a ticket tout. They are twins, but don't worry about that. Neither knows of the other's existence.

When the operative is gunned down in the line of duty, Oakes, who had been working with him, discovers the chess player and grooms him to take his brother's place in a sting, involving a nuclear bomb, a Russian mobster (Peter Stormare), a suitcase and the Czech Republic. The jokes dry up, because Rock is a one-gag guy, and all that's left is a series of shoot-outs, car chases and muscular men with Slavic accents dying violently.