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BAD COMPANY

Chris Rock first appears in Bad Company playing Kevin, a supersmooth, Harvard-educated CIA agent. He’s not very convincing, which may have something to do with the fact that he’s dead within minutes. Cut to Chris Rock again, this time as Kevin’s twin brother Jake, a speed-chess hustler and ticket scalper. Jake is a clever guy, raised in the projects and going nowhere fast. How lucky for him that his brother -- whom he never knew existed, as they were orphaned at birth and sent off to different foster homes -- has been murdered. How lucky indeed, that he’s offered a gig with the CIA, impersonating Kevin and saving the world from Eurotrashy nuclear terrorists. All this passes for premise in Bad Company, directed by intrepid Joel Schumacher and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Preposterous doesn’t begin to cover it: Anthony Hopkins (as Kevin’s mentor and Jake’s new boss) in an vaguely comic action picture; Rock in a vaguely dramatic action picture; and oh yes, that nuclear threat plot point, responsible for pushing the film’s release date back from last year, because terrorism in NYC didn’t look like such a good subject for Chris Rock’s ironic twisting back then. Now, while the subject might be less immediately traumatic, the twisting is just painful. Bad Company’s timing is still off. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA Riverview; UA Cheltenham)

ENIGMA

The story of the British cryptologists who cracked the Nazi code and helped win WWII is no doubt a fascinating one -- too bad it’s only nominally the subject of Michael Apted’s preposterous thriller. Set at Bletchley Park, the home of Allied codebreaking, the story, adapted by Tom Stoppard from the novel by Richard Harris, has more than its share of similarities to A Beautiful Mind, among them a mathematical genius (Dougray Scott) who suffered a nervous breakdown and has only reluctantly returned to work. Kate Winslet, apparently under a dictum to appear as mousy as actorly possible, wears ludicrous Granny glasses and pinches her nose to play the “glorified file clerk” who helps Scott in his search to unravel a mystery involving the woman whose departure sent him into a tailspin. Reeking of an attempt to sex up the unglamorous subject matter, Enigma starts with historical fact and then runs from it doublequick. Only Jeremy Northam, as a slimy intelligence agent assigned to keep tabs on Scott, has any fun at all. --S.A. (Ritz Bourse; Ritz 16)

SON OF THE BRIDE

Juan José Campanella’s film shares a star (Ricardo Darín) with the recent Argentinean import Nine Queens, but it’s as thoughtful as that movie was deliberately shallow. Darín, Queens’ oily trickster, here plays a frenetic-aged restauranteur sliding into middle age without much grace, resentful of his parents -- especially his mother (Norma Aleandro), whose memory is rapidly eroding. His father (Héctor Alterio, Aleandro’s co-star in The Official Story) has become convinced that the best cure for his wife is to remarry her, even though she can’t remember the first time they got married. Darín is unrepentant until a heart attack breaks his stride, and an old friend comes back into his life. In some ways, it’s the stuff of TV movies, but Darín brings such conviction to his role you experience the familiar anew. --S.A. (Ritz Bourse)