Double Identity (2010)
Starring Val Kilmer, Izabella Miko
Director: Dennis Dimster
Studio: First Look Studios [2/23/10]
Video: 2.35:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9
Audio: English DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Extras: Previews
Length: 93 minutes
Rating: ***
Not to be confused with Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. It actually lifts some elements from a Hitchcock film, North By Northwest. This is the latest straight-to-DVD movie involving Val Kilmer. (And I’m afraid after viewing it we can understand why.) Shot in Sofia, Bulgaria and Prague, the film has Kilmer as an American physician working for Doctors Beyond Borders. While returning from a nighttime home birth, he is mistakenly identified by Russian gangsters as a secret agent and abducted. He doesn’t prove the action hero he is depicted as on the DVD cover, but does somehow escape getting killed by all the various bad and not-so-bad guys in the convoluted plot – dangerous Eastern Europeans, British Secret Service, criminal government officials, and opportunistic diamond merchants.
He is saved by a beautiful secret agent who is the mistress of one of the Russians. Her involvement, however, threatens her own life and so naturally he has to go back and risk all to rescue her. The cinematography and editing are fine, but Kilmer especially seems to be sleep-walking thru many of his scenes. Nice to know that everyone in Bulgaria seems to speak perfect English.
– John Sunier
