The Double 0 Kid (1992 Video)
5/10
Graveyard of C-List Celebrities
17 May 2022
Extremely amateurish production that reunites a bunch of one-hit wonder character actors who were moderately famous in the 80s.

Brigette Nielsen plays her normal femme fatale with a short haircut. There's a scene where she's in a jacuzzi wearing an evening gown - I guess they didn't pay her enough to show much flesh.

Vizzinni from The Pricess Bride plays his normal role - a short intelligent villain who's squirrleyness nevertheless gets him into trouble. Again, it seems the studio went with a no-frills package with him, as there's a point where he clearly wants to say "inconveicable," but he just says "impossible" instead.

John Rhys-Davis gives a riveting performance as fat guy in a suit with a funky accent engaged in shady business - again, a pretty normal role for him throughout the 80s.

All of this is spearheaded by an ageing Corey Haim, who clearly couldn't transition from his character role of teenage rapscallion to adult and here, at the age of 21 in 1992, he's about to fall off the cliff of fame into the ravine of obscurity.

The plot is nonsense. Haim's character is some intern for secret agents and he's charged with delivering a red herring to LA where the cinematographer takes over and works overtime taking shots of LA beaches, the LA zoo, and the graffitti-infested facade of other LA landmarks. Along the way Haim kisses a lot of random girls and dresses himself up like a Batman villain updated for a 90's audience.

The production values are just about as low as it can get for professional productions from USA. At one point Haim gets chased around by a marauding pack of kids playing street hockey and they tumble around threateningly around him. Most of the characters seem to be untrained actors, with the only minor performance of any note being the Haim's brother character at the beginning of the movie - he really looks indignant that Haim stole his bike. You can feel the rage.

A 5 for being mildly entertaining and having some effective scenes of violence. You might enjoy it, but not for its professionalism or artistry. It's the lowest of the low in film entertainment.

All of the major characters here would go on to wallow in the 90's as has-beens from the 80's.

Honourable Mentions: Detective Casanachas en Acapulco (1994). Veteran film actor Alfonso Zayas' pathetic denoument. It's very reminiscent of this movie - low production values, extras used to save money for bit characters, famous character actors reduced to a shriveled existence, and the cinematographer picking up most of the slack with irrelevant shots of some famous locale.
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