I just saw it tonight. LIKED IT! The action scenes were good, Chris Rock’s humor and wisecracks were kept to an effective but subtle level, and didn’t seem so shoehorned into the movie (unlike Lethal Weapon 4 and Down to Earth). Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock play off each other well, and there’s the usual set-up and payoff with certain turns of phrase and sequences. Garcelle Beauvais was HOT in that lingerie getup, and it’s a shame we didn’t see more of her in the movie.

What was REALLY cool was that Jake (Chris Rock) was from Jersey City, NJ, right next door to my home town, and toward the end of the film a shot of New Jersey shows two buildings right near me. Cool!

Story by Gary Goodman & David Himmelstein
Screenplay by Jason Richman & Michael Browning
Directed by Joel Schumacher

Cast
Anthony Hopkins Gaylord Oakes
Chris Rock Jake Hayes/Kevin Pope
Garcelle Beauvais Nicole
Gabriel Macht Michel "The Hammer" Petrov
Adoni Maropis Jarma
Peter Stormare Adrik Vas
John Aylward Dragon Ijonojich
Brooke Smith Agent Swanson

NITS:
When Jake and Oakes’ are running from the bomb sale in a car through a wooded area and crash head-on against a tree, no airbags pop out (I guess Czech cars aren’t equipped with them?), and even though neither one has seatbelts on, they suffer no head-on collision injuries.

The female CIA agent (played by Brooke Smith—much slimmer than when she played Catherine Martin, the senator’s overweight daughter in The Silence of the Lambs) finds the tracking device on Jake and Oakes’ car, and says they "lost" their tracking device. Mind you, the bad guys didn’t find it and remove it, they LOST it, and not even during the chase, but when the car was parked. Why is a CIA tracking device able to fall off so easily?

We're having another screening for it this coming Friday. I was recruiting for it tonight at the Tower Records in Lincoln Square--a place Chris Rock frequents regularly, and at which I met him last just over a year ago--and as I talked to one of the employees, he was a bit surprised. I pointed, and there was Chris Rock. As a joke, I held up the mini poster for the movie, and as he passed by, I said, "Sir, would you like to see a free movie Friday," and he said, "Uh, wow, is it any good?" I said, "Yeah, I saw it a couple of weeks ago, and loved it!" A bit later, as I was signing up another employee, he comes by with his wife and asks the employee about some DVDs, and after he left, I continued to sign up the employee, but we both started cracking up at the silliness of the situation.

Saw it again tonight. I confirmed that the buildings I saw in that shot on Mayu 10 were the buildings I live close to.

MORE NITS:
Even though Vass thinks Michael Turner (Nick Pope--Jake's deceased twin brother) is only an antiques dealer, he should expect him to take safety precautions when making a transaction with the type of product Vass is selling, and it's not like Vass would've suspected Turner/Pope was a CIA agent if he knew he was taking such precautions, and he never even apparently padded him or Oakes down. So shouldn't Pope/Turner (and Oakes, for that matter) have worn a bullet proof vests in the beginning of the movie when first meeting with Vass?

During the car chase where one guy gets onto the hood of Oakes and Jake's car, he smashes through the windshield as if it's glass without the thin sheet covering it. (Obviously, this is done to make the danger of the thug actually reaching through the windshield seem more immediate. The same thing happens when the future cops show up to first arrest Wesley Snipes Demolition Man.)

It wasn't very smart for Oakes and his men not to presume that Nicole might come back to Michael Turner/Nick Pope, and advise Jake about her.

Toward the end of the movie, Oakes' men implant a tranceiver behind Hayes' ear to hear what he hears. Makes sense. But why can't that thing act as a locator as well, so that (spoiler warning:) they don't lost track of Jake? (end spoiler warning.)

Some differences between the movie and the trailer:

In the trailer, a guy sits down in front of Jake to play speed chess with him in the park. Jake shows him that he knows what he's going to do, and convinces him to just give him the twenty dollar bet and save 20 minutes. The guy does so. In the movie, the guy just gets up and dismissively tells Jake what to do with himself. The shot of the hand dropping down 20 bucks in the trailer is actually the previous guy who lost to Jake just before this new guy who sat down. What's funny is that that previous guy was black, and the new guy Jake tries to convince to simply forfeit his money up front is white. If you download the trailer, you'll see the guy Jake tries to con is white, and if you then freeze the frame of the hand dropping the 20 dollar bill, the hand is black.

In the trailer, Jake puts on some rap, and Oakes says, "Is that rap?", Swanson responds, "Yes," and Oakes says, "It's horrible." In the movie, Oakes says, "What is that, it's horrible," and the guy to Oakes' left says, "Just some hip-hop stuff."

When Oakes' boss first shows Jake the device, Jake says, "Does it play DVD's?" (This is even funnier in light of what happened the other night!) Oakes' boss says more or less, "No, it's a thermonuclear device," and Jake says again, "But does it play DVD's?" This repitition isn't very funny, and it doesn't happen in the movie. Jake only asks this once, and after the boss tells him what it really is, Jake doesn't repeat this line.

Oh yeah. I forgot: spoiler warning: When Nicole and Jake are kissing in the hallway outside Michael Turner's suite, she suddenly pulls away from him, and says that he's not Michael Turner. When Jake tries to dismiss this and convince her that of course he is, she says, "I don't know who you are, but you're NOT Michael Turner!" I was curious to see how she figured this out. It's interesting that when Jake acts far more "in touch with his feelings" with Nicole over dinner, she simply thinks Michael has changed, rather than that this is an imposter. But for some reason, she figured it out kissing him. What was it? His cologne? His being left-handed instead of right-handed, or vice versa? But they never say! Was the part where Nicole explained how she knew cut out? end spoiler warning.

Luigi: I would've thought the answer to that obvious. Clearly the two men kiss differnetly. Duh.

But if she noticed how different he was "emotionally" over dinner, then why could it not occur to her that he was trying a new "approach" to kissing? Would it be so hard for her to fathom that a radical change in one's emotional outlook might affect the way they kiss or make love? She's not dumb, after all, she's a CNN reporter; she could figure that out.

But even if it were that, it would've been nice to have heard her specify it.

Just saw it today! Great movie!

Very funny.

And yeah, Luigi, I noticed the chess thing, too.

I could not figure out why the Nicole character was in the film at all. She served no purpose to the plot. I really expected her to surface later on CNN to blow his cover, or something. What was the point? Just some eye candy?

Yeahhhhhh!

During their first meeting, when haggling over how to pay Jake his 50 grand for the mission, Oakes offers to pay Jake 10 up front, and 40 upon completion of the mission. Jake then insists 10 up front, and 90 later. Did I remember this right? Is Oakes talking dollars, and Jake talking percentage? This is not smart, since Oakes was offering to pay Jake 10 grand, or 20% up front, and Jake insisted on only 10%.

Was this movie set in 1999? When Oakes' team first greets Jake in the beginning of the movie, and Oake reads off the stats of Jake and Kevin, he says they were born in 1970. But when Jake is later studying Kevin's life, and asks what kind of music he liked, Seal says he didn't like rap, and Jake asks what kind of "29-year old brother" doesn't like rap.

After Nicole shows up in Jake/Kevin/Michael Turner's shower, Oakes tells Jake that they broke up "several" weeks ago, but over dinner, Nicole says she walked out two weeks ago.

Why are there no other hotel employees or guests in the hallway during the firefight between the Black Hand and Oakes' team?

One of the all-time dialogue anachronisms:
Oakes: "Get in the car...bi+ch."

So nice, he said it twice.

Interesting idea Luigi. That Jake might have been talking percentages, while Oakes was talking money. Like most movie discussions of this type, I saw both of them talking about money. Still, an interesting idea.
Several is an extremely nebulous measurement for me. So for me, it is possible that someone can say two, and someone can say several and mean the same amount of time.
As for the tracking device, I remember the scene going down this way. The device falling off, not when the car was parked, but, the device falling off at the start of the chase, when the car was leaving the monastery and hit a bump.
And like CC, I enjoyed it as well.

Luigi, I thought Oakes *did* say two weeks.

He said several. To me, people usually say "a couple" to mean two, "a few" to mean three, and words like "several" are used to mean four or more.

Same with me.

But I thought I heard "couple"...hmm. Oh, well.