Bad Apple (TV Movie 2004) Poster

(2004 TV Movie)

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a well done film
Bordick_fan8 December 2004
This movie was awesome. The cast was well selected and they performed beautifully. The film had a nice blend of humor, action and drama that made the experience well worth it. I thought Robert Patrick and Chris Noth were very convincing in their respected lead roles. Colm Meaney and Mercedes Ruehl playing the married couple caught in a very stressful yet funny situation complimented the main plot very well. Elliott Gould can play a kingpin like second nature and the addition of Jim Gaffigan as the annoying tech-man was icing on the cake. The soundtrack, story line and the overall performance of the cast made the movie enjoyable to watch. Cudos to TNT and all who worked on it. Give this one the emmy nod. I'll be sure to buy it ASAP!
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2/10
Please explain to me.....
NHNeil23 February 2004
Could someone please explain to me the reason for making this movie? Sad is about all I can say; this movie took absolutely no direction and wound up with me shaking my head. What an awful waste of two hours. Noth should be ashamed of himself for taking money for this piece of garbage.
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3/10
What a Crap!
claudio_carvalho15 October 2005
I have just wasted my Saturday night watching this crap! I saw the names of Chris Noth (Mr. Big, from "Sex & the City"), Robert Patrick (from "X-Files"), the decadent Elliot Gould, Colm Meaney and Mercedes Ruehl on the credit; a very reasonable IMDb Rating (5,6); and many good reviews in IMDb. For my total surprise, the film is horrible: the characters are badly constructed; the story tries to be funny, but it is totally silly; the character of Mercedes Ruehl is amazingly stupid for a professor of Princeton. So, I decided to investigate the credibility of the good reviews, and I found that most of them are made by IMDb Users with only review, therefore relatives or friends of the cast and crew, or people hired to promote this garbage. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Sem Retorno" ("Without Return")
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3/10
Rotten Apple
Brady-516 February 2004
This started out slow, then got worse. The best parts of this were all seen in the previews.

Bad Apple has the feel of a pilot - if that's the case TNT should save their money.
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7/10
It's a keeper. Chris Noth, Colm Meaney, Elliott Gould and Dagmara Dominczyk. Enough said.
pikagnome19 May 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Quite different for a Noth flick, but I actually liked it. Saw it at Wal-Mart tonight and thought, what the heck? Why not get it? It's Noth, and it's got Colm Meaney, Elliott Gould and Dagmara Dominczyk (from The Count of Monte Cristo and Third Watch) in it. Looked more like a made-for-TV-piece though than the motion picture its opening credits claimed it to be, but it was funky and fun.

I wouldn't say it was suspenseful or a thriller in the pure sense of the word like the DVD jacket claimed, but rather a quirky comedy with some inane situations involving Elmore Leonard-like characters: Mercedes Ruehl as a Princeton professor of medieval history who teaches a stripper some philosophy in a strip joint after having been "kidnapped" by mobsters along with her FBI agent husband (shades of Jamie Lee Curtis and Schwarzenegger from True Lies but not nearly as good), and Elliott Gould's character. Gould played a mobster named "Buddha," which was satirically sacrilegious to both organized crime and Buddhism, which seemed to be the movie's main theme (whether intended or not): suffering is caused by desire and the way to end that suffering is through an enlightenment, of which several characters in the movie got -- enlightened, so to speak. Anyways, it's a keeper in my DVD library.
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8/10
Good dialogue and some fresh roles for familiar faces.
JamieF9 April 2004
It took a while to get used to Chris Noth as an undercover cop (and Robert Patrick as a thug!) but once I got over that it was a lot of fun. The characters weren't entirely believable but their quirks served the plot and dialogue well. There were quite a few quotable one and two line bits in this movie that made me laugh out loud. I had pretty low expectations for a TNT movie and this really exceeded them - there were a lot of well-directed moments of great comic timing and meaningful glances that made me chuckle.

I'm very surprised to see the low ratings that this movie got - I'm not sure what people had issues with. (I prefer to comment before reading other people's comments, to avoid tainting my own impressions with other's criticisms.) All of the lead actors turned in excellent performances, the writing was good, the wardrobe for the criminal characters was funny all by itself, and in general I thought this was well done. It's no classic but it was entertaining and I didn't say "oh no it's just more Hollywood crap" once.
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A good, funny, and unconventional movie
gleetroy27 February 2004
I thought this was a terrific movie! It was very different from the standard Feds vs. Mobsters type movie. Chris Noth is terrific as a Fed who seems to lead with his heart and not his head, which isn't a good idea when you're undercover. The rest of the cast is equally excellent. Colm Meaney plays his exasperated, cranky partner, who has a dysfunctional(but still sort of loving) relationship with his spouse, the always great Mercedes Ruehl. Dagmara Domincnk (I think I spelled that wrong)plays the tough Jersey Girl love interest, and she's hysterical. I loved Robert Patrick as Tommy Bells, the psychotic mobster who chops people up for fun. He succeeds in not only being scary but also very funny. The kind of guy when you don't know if he's going to sit in a chair or bash it over somebody's head. Elliot Gould is hysterical as the bad tempered "Godfather" who wants to get to his condo in Florida more. I think what I liked so much about this movie was that no one really acts like you would expect them to. I think this movie was a funny, suspenseful treat.
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8/10
OK Movie
animosityview500017 February 2004
Seeing advertisements for Bad Apple got curious about movie because for one, I like Chris Noth's work on Law and Order and and believed that movie will be good. The Movie is somewhat quirky in its own way because the music,characters and plot are unusual. Noth who plays a FBI agent trying to bring down the mob by undercover is really nothing special but has its moments.

Overall the movie has it moments but falls short 7/10
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10/10
I loved this show....
clydenenee22 February 2004
Chris Noth was good, but Robert Patrick was fantastic as the psycho, Bell. He was so believable, I loved how they did his hair and his costume. As this was a made for TV movie, I think that they did an excellent job on the cinematography, and I found the story line very entertaining.

I can hardly wait for this to come out on DVD.
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10/10
Excellent, for a TV movie.
cableaddict15 February 2004
This is a very well made, well scripted, well directed movie.

One has to rate it, however, based on the fact that it's a "Made for TNN" production. As such, it somehow feels like a TV show, not a major motion picture. It's an odd thing, because I can't quite place why this is. Maybe it's the lighting, or the quality of the film stock, or.. ????

The director has previously done some of the "Law and Order" episodes, and that's basically what this film looks like.

Still, it's totally engaging. A great mix of action and intelligent humor. No typical cliches, and the cast is absolutely perfect.

Highly recommended.
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How to categorize this one?
shu-fen10 September 2004
Biting an apple, a good one, I only got shaky and broken words for this TV movie. Shaky and broken like its plot.

God, thank you for Dominczyk's pretty face and sexy exotic Polish accent. Lovely voice she has.

Robert Patrick, I only saw his "Terminator" in which he doesn't need to speak at all but kill and run. How delightful to find out that his voice is exactly like Martin Sheen's, though MS is 18 years senior to RP. Actually RP can do far better, the faulty plot just doesn't allow him to shine brighter. BTW, I like his look, blond and fair.

Chris Noth is known here in town largely due to the huge success of Sex and the City. How come he looks so downcast here.

Why doesn't Colm Meaney call for backup when that is really necessary?

Claps to Howard Korder, quite a number of lines are hilariously funny.

"Comedy"? How did it achieve this title? I don't know how to laugh during and after seeing it.

Big thank you to the VCD distributors in town and the visual technology, I don't need to tolerate the TV commercials, it took me less than 96 minutes to sweep it through with the fast-forward button.
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8/10
Very underrated, a whole ton of fun
NateWatchesCoolMovies11 January 2016
Bad Apple is a very hard to find, MTV produced crime comedy that doesn't look like much upon first glance, but contains some absolutely hysterical situational comedy, and just enough of its own quirky flavor to make it memorable. It stars a mopey Chris Noth as Tozzi, a slick undercover FBI agent who is trying to infiltrate a gang of New York mobsters while also falling in love with the sister (Dagmara Dominczyk) of his informer. He finds himself involved with two unsavory hoodlums: sour tempered Buddha Stanzione (Eliott Gould) and rampaging lunatic Tommy 'Bells' Bellavita (Robert Patrick). This is one of Patrick's shining hours and it's a shame no one has seen this because he truly subverts his strong and silent stereotype with a performance straight out of a loony toons movie. His Tommy sports the most terrifying blonde dye job I've ever seen, adding to his gleefully menacing aura, and whether he's happily intimidating everything that moves, or treating people by dual wielding chainsaws, he's an absolute treasure. There's supporting work from Mercedes Ruehl, Colm Meaney and Jim Gaffigan as well. It all floats by in a nicely entertaining package of hardboiled crime that accented wonderfully by its harebrained sense of absurd comedy. My kind of combination.
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GREAT MOVIE!! VERY ELMORE LEONARD LIKE!!
mac43815 February 2004
This movie is very reminiscent of the elmore leonard movies and is AMAZING!!! I'm very suprised a movie of this calibur was just PLAYING on TNT. Also this movie has a very STELLAR cast. Espically for a made for tv movie!!!
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this was fun!
craignsandy17 February 2004
this was so cool, lets have a bad apple two!!!! any fan of chris noth or robert patrick should enjoy this movie. i would love to see this become a weekly 1hr event. they picked all the right people for all the right parts.
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looks interesting, but avoid
kencrisis23 February 2004
Warning: Spoilers
Like me, you might want be thinking about watching this movie for the "name" actors in it and the promise of a funky, funny mob laugh-up. Believe me, you shouldn't waste your time. Half way into this horribly ill-concieved production, I knew that I was too invested to stop watching but would regret every moment of the next hour. I stuck it out and, yes, I did regret every moment of the second hour.

Even if you are a fan of late-night, beer-soaked trash TV (like me), this isn't worth your time and will make all but the dimmest of people angry with all the horribly weak plot developments. Worse than the worst Three's Company episodes you'll find yourself screaming over and over again about how, if they only just acted like they were as smart as they were supposed to be (re: 3rd graders), non of the characters would act the way they do.

SPOILERS: Why doesn't Chris Noth call the FBI instead of 911 (he must have a toll-free number for that)? Why doesn't the pigeon just shoot the guy from T2 at the crucial moment (even the worst James Bond movies weren't so lame)? I could go on, but the real question is, Why doesn't everyone who ever gets into a pickle in this movie do anything to get out of it -- when it's so easy to get out that pickle and staying in it is the hardest thing to do?

Totally frustrating, every character totally hatable, totally nonsensical in every way, this is the only movie that has ever inspired me to actually register with IMDB to make a comment. As a big fan of bad movies, I have to say that when I read reviews like the one I just wrote, I usually want to watch the movie. PLEASE, this is the exception. You will be so bored. Easily the worst TNT movie ever made.

Mr. Noth (executive producer, lead actor), what the hell were you thinking? I can't help but think how you've sabotaged your own career.
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