Double Identity (2009) Online

Val Kilmer, looking nice and swank, heavier... but I still miss the old days when he played roles like the Saint. Then, we saw a much sharper, expressive, and exciting Kilmer. In this movie, Kilmer plays a doctor who becomes mistaken for a secret agent/diamond dealer, with the usual nefarious consequences. The story does try to keep you interested till the very end, but I felt Kilmer was a bit of a letdown.

The movie takes place in Bulgaria, not Chechenya, and from there, moves to Prague. Most of the supporting actors seem to be slavic, but they all acted well. I could find no fault there. The girl, Katrine (Izabella Miko) is beautiful and acted well too.

The main plot is not about saving anyone mysterious, nor protecting her from assailants. The girl is a secret double agent, working both for a British group seeking to control a diamond cartel, and the Bulgarian/Czech people who also want control of the same. The girl bumps into Kilmer, while running from being captured taking pictures for the Brits, kiss to make believe it was intentional to shake them off, and that begins a love affair, so strong, both were willing to risk their lives for the other. Whether or not you believe this is highly improbable depends on your definition of the word, but that is the plot, in a nutshell.

This is not to say that the movie is just a frivolous jamboree of hastily made-up story lines. No, it was OK, considering the story is nothing new, and similar plots have been used many times before. It would be a mistake to compare this movie with older ones of similar ideas, such as 007 Diamonds Are Forever. Such movies were a tour de force. It would be an injustice to make such comparisons, so the best thing to do, I guess, is just to take this one as a standalone, and judge it by its own merit. Doing so, it is not a shining accomplishment, but neither does it fail miserably.

So, bottom line: "will I like it?" If you like this kind of plot, it will keep you interested, but you'll have to follow the story carefully to avoid becoming confused. I know I did until I started doing some facial recognition. Despite the blasé storyline, it's not a bad waste of time.

It doesn't seem that long ago that Val Kilmer was a big star appearing in major Hollywood movies - it's kind of sad to see that just about all of his recent work has been for the straight-to-DVD market. And in these films (and this one), he appears to have put on some weight, looking somewhat puffy and tired. Actually, aside from that, he doesn't have much to be ashamed about for this particular straight-to-DVD movie. It has its faults - the story is set in 1992 for no apparent reason, Kilmer's character is not properly introduced, and for a thriller, the movie is surprisingly calm - it could have used with a bit more juice in its narrative and a few exciting action scenes. Still, the movie is professionally filmed, a trademark of Millennium Films/Nu Image, and it's nice to see one of their shot-in-Bulgaria movies actually set in Bulgaria! And while the movie could have been more engaging, it does manage to set up a mystery that keeps you watching - there's never a time I could consider anywhere near boring. No, don't seek it out, but if it comes on TV during a slow day, you could do worse.

The older Val Kilmer gets the worst he is.

Fatty, heavy, clumsy and without any ability to show any emotion. He looks like a stoned junkie.

The story itself is below average.

Double, triple, quadruple agents are messing with each other without any sign of consistency.

Boring characters, boring storyline, no acting, predictable outcome.

Everything is there to make you feel cheated.

The main disappointment is Kilmer. I think he is drinking too much. His face is puffy, he moves like a tired elephant.

Don't waste your time...

Although this is low budget thriller with some little goofs, I found this movie extremely entertaining and surprising.

Val Kilmer might have become a slow and fat guy, but he is still a very charismatic and talented actor and is credible in his role as a hesitating and nervous doctor who becomes more and more determined to find the pieces of a mysterious and complicated puzzle even if he could have played his role with a little bit more emotions. The charming and beautiful Izabelle Miko does also a great job as a "femme fatale" and double-agent in troubles. Bulgaria is an interesting shooting place for this movie and presents us a little bit of a foreign culture and city.

Concerning the story line, this movie has several surprises and is sometimes difficult to follow with all its intrigues, conspiracies and double-agents. I think that the story is well elaborated and deserves us some surprises and twists. That's maybe why many people don't understand the goals of some organizations. But if you watch this movie with more attention again and do not concentrate on the question if the cars are more recent than 1992 when the story is settled (who really cares) or if several criminals speak in Russian (by the way, it is logical that especially the Russian criminals tried to get a better life elsewhere after the downfall of communism and the creation of many "new" countries), you might understand more and more all the details and connections in this well done agent movie.

This movie is surely nothing innovating or extremely suspenseful, but good entertainment and a twisted and surprising movie with two interesting main actors.

I was attract by the fact that Val Kilmor is playing and also the movie was screened in my country - Bulgaria. There are very rough mistakes in the film: - the act is in Bulgaria but many of the Bulgarians speaks Russian :) - the year is 1992 but... all the actors has mobiles. - even it is 1992 the cars around(not the cars of the actors) are from 2000 :) - and the worse - I did not get who is working for who and what is the main goal of the bad and the good guys. At the end - all of "bad" were killed, all the "good" come to New York. Very very stupid and low budgeted film. I think that the only good in this film is that the main actress is quite pretty and it is nice to look at her. (I don't want to say a word about Val Kilmor, because he is not in the good shape and it looks like, that the low budget and the mistakes do not bothered him)

Well, folks, here's the thing... Nu Image is all about business. Invest "X" amount of money, get "X x 2". That's why you get the results this studio is showing recently. For a couple of millions you can NOT get a Hollywood star, neither you can get a real Hollywood set or decent script that can make the story interesting. Same goes for the FX effects and all the stuns. At the end you have "X" amount of DVD market sells, that breaks the bill for Nu Image and some profit. But, you get Val Kilmer, Wesley Snipes, Jean Clode or Steven Segal. Most of the time… By the way, all of them have a hell of a time in Bulgaria, because the clubs, drinks, food and specially the girls are cheap, and they come in great quantities and varieties. For an average US viewer this movie will be a mess of unsubstantiated facts, story lines and unjust mix of languages that make no sense. But hey, who gives a damn in that type of a B-movie weather the cars are from the age, the cell phones are current or anything in the story make any sense or not. Once you get Nu Image release all you want is some action, stuns, gun fight, FX and naked pretty girls. You don't get every time all of the above in enough quality and quantity, but life is unfair anyways....

For all Bulgarian viewers, the movie was a bouquet of ALL Bulgarian movie stars gathered together in funny roles. Even the tight budget by US movie standards, is more than enough to pay all those Bulgarian actors plenty. Show your self for 30 seconds, don't say a word, get a thousand bucks or more. In Bulgaria that's a bargain. Izabella Miko is a charm, too bad she does not get naked here. Val Kilmer is kind of drugged or drunk (from all that night life he got in Sofia maybe) All the Bulgarians are fine – the do their job professionally. Almost no FX what so ever, no dissent stuns. Couple of good scenery shots in Sofia. Extremely stupid and lame story.

That's it folks…

The plot is silly, one hurried kiss and the two main characters have fallen so deeply in love they will risk their lives for each other.

The acting is OK, Kilmer plays an over-weight doctor well, you can really believe he is struggling gamely to run and out of breath! The rest of the cast are OK.

The story is a mess, none of it makes sense.

The dialogue is poor.

The ending is almost comical it is so ridiculous.

This isn't a good film but if you can switch your brain off you can watch it.

Double Identity is being aired almost daily now on Showtime. I give it ten stars (a first?! no matter) for two things I found rang true.

First, the mood (1992) is pretty authentic. I was working a lot at that time in Sofia and Prague and Warsaw and Budapest and Berlin. This was just about the time the Berlin Wall came down and there was this strong feeling of underlying chaos and not really any strong sense of a central government. Many things were fluid and up for grabs. Certainly there were some crooks, but they didn't need to be of the gun-toting variety, look at how some of the oil oligarchs made it big in Russia, they merely had to game the system.

It was hard to even phone out of the Hiltons at the time (hotels just like that one existed in every capital, in part to suck in people with dollars) and the phone networks absolutely sucked. I would have given a lot for a cell phone! But the roads were indeed often cobbled and the newer buildings often very ugly and street lighting was spasmodic and in some of the countries the gasoline fumes from the cars smelled like cabbage water. I did always like the food. Their tomatoes and fruit were something to die for.

I miss those times because there was a lot of idealism pushing its way through (much of it from out of the universities as in Prague) and appreciated the courage and earnestness and hard work of many good people many of whom had been averaging maybe $100 a month in a high level profession. Someone in the forum here said none of the script should have been in Russian but Russian was the lingua franca for all those countries and Bulgarians used it with great ease and Bulgaria (which got a good deal out of Comecon) never hated the Russians as much as say the Poles and Hungarians.

Second, I though the Miko character was pretty authentic. I don't recall a lot of blonds in Sofia but in Warsaw there were and are hundreds if not thousands of blonds not too unlike her. In St Petersburg and Moscow too. They typically have a great deal of confidence and that icy lack of fear and no problems in asserting themselves. A few were high class call girls (openly sitting in every hotel) but many were in the public institutions like schools and hospitals and laboratories and hotel management, teaching and organizing and researching.

I liked how Miko spoke and carried herself, and her suits and her blond hair, especially when she had it up. Very good eye contact and control. She came across as about age 30 and I liked her in-command and decisive persona a little more in this movie than her personas in some of the others I have just checked out where she plays younger and more dependent. Typically such women (unless they were call girls) were remote and watchful rather than available and the one really inauthentic moment in the movie for me was when she and the Kilmer character lunged at one another the second time they met, in the hotel.

Thanks to the makers of the film for getting these things really right, and thanks to Miko for an elegant portrayal. Her early ballet maybe helped her a lot in poise and control of her movement. If she can find other parts like this one, she should keep going for years. I hope she looks.

And to me Kilmer played his character just fine. As far as I could see he was meant to be a somewhat bumbling do-good doctor so that the real action figure played by Miko could keep fishing him out.

Probably one of the lamest movies I have sat through in recent memory and only exhaustion kept me from finding something else. Val Kilmer has gotten so heavy I worried about him stroking out while trying to run through the woods in an early scene. Then when I realized the movie made no effort at real athletic stunts, I quit worrying. The so-called passion between the 2 stars was the most imaginary part of the whole movie. It was so imaginary, in fact, it was nonexistent. The plot was so convoluted that for awhile I was tricked into believing it was complex. By the end I realized it was just confused. The only reason I am wasting my time writing this review, is to keep you from wasting your time watching this movie. You have been warned.

At first I'm thinking this movie, DOUBLE IDENTITY, is more like this year's Liam Neeson flick, UNKNOWN, what with the possibility that Val Kilmer's doctor character has amnesia, or a split personality. A few minutes later plot developments show that DOUBLE IDENTITY is more exactly similar to THE TOURIST, as it becomes clear the doctor is what he says he is, and he's simply helping out the damsel in distress, played by Izabella Miko. Do Kilmer and Miko share more on-screen chemistry than Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie? Probably, but that really is not saying much. Are the plot twists of DOUBLE IDENTITY any more plausible than those of THE TOURIST? No, but at least not as much money was wasted in this film on pyrotechnics and Venetian scenery. One of the main faults I had viewing DOUBLE IDENTITY was a sense of deja vu; having seen this all before, along the lines of something Graham Greeney--maybe THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE. Certainly another quibble some viewers may share is that the ending of DOUBLE IDENTITY feels quite forced and rushed, with the loose ends tied up just a little too neatly. The denouement even has a made-for-TV movie-of-the-week quality; you almost expect to see Tom Selleck come strutting down that sidewalk!

A disappointing film. I actually enjoyed Val Kilmer's the Saint (pacy action, use of gadgets) however corny it may have been, so I hoped for something similar with this, ie a couple of hours of light relief. Sadly this film is unremarkable, a 'me-too' 80's thriller that covers ground that already so familiar from previous Eastern European / spy / cold war movies. The authentic settings catch your interest at the start but there is nothing in the plot to hold this. The girl is beautiful but the men are all clichés. I considered walking out and going for a pizza, several times, but hope kept me in my seat, mistakenly. At the end I walked out muttering about 2 hours of my life wasted.

This movie is full of complex plot twists, which can be rather difficult to follow and keeps you guessing till the end. Honestly, if it hadn't been for a few inexplicable jumps in the plot line, I'd have rated it higher. To explain more, would make this a spoiler, but suffice it to say, the "good guys" are scarce in this movie and just when you think you've guessed who's good and who's not, you'll probably find you're wrong.

This was oddly humorous, much like 'Hardwired' (another Kilmer gem). It has so many mistakes, like how the 1992 setting has cars from past 2000, and the characters have cell phones. Kilmer is bored, he looks likes he had one too many the whole movie.

The story is simple, and had some promise, American Doctor (this is Kilmer) rescues Bulgarian woman (Isabella Miko) and gets in some trouble.

Kilmer stumbles around like he's drunk. He's put on some weight, and I thought he was like a bumbling comic relief character. Only he was the main character. This made it kinda funny.

If you could use a laugh this might be good. Mind numbing way to spend an hour and a half.

Oh my gosh. Val Kilmer, what are you doing in such a grade B movie? The plot was so unreal, it was stupid at times. The acting was just as bad. The actions of the dumb doctor here (played by Kilmer) were so out of the ordinary of a regular person, they were almost laughable. Of course, the really bad cartel guys were so bad, it made for a 2nd plot line.

The only redeeming factor was to see the pretty Isabella Miko play the agent. What a beauty.

This film opened in Thailand. So, you get the idea.

A waste of talent, film, and time. Just horrible!

I'm too tired to think and be insightful, though I've had the energy to read some of the other reviews and I think most USERS got it right. There's enough nice scenery, things to try and figure out (though not that tough) and story here to keep one mildly entertained. Though if you're like me watching via streaming video and are pulled away at mid-point there is no guarantee the film will be finished later. I would bet the makers knew they were putting together a movie for the sake of making a movie, as opposed to being particularly inspired. WARNING: Kilmer has put on much weight. You'd think the makers would be smart enough to eliminate action, chase scenes, etc. Wrong. Val is seen too often outrunning fit men at a pace assuring last place at the local fundraising 5K race. Hey Val, the ambulance is right behind you and they've already closed the finish line reception.

The story-line is too boring, too much mystery & most scenes make no sense at all. the woman is risking her life & her plan for a total stranger. he's smoothly dealing with action & killings for a doctor!. You can't keep the viewer from simplest facts in the plot till its half! bad and unrealistic had to go through the full film waiting for better action or time line, still it ends worst than it starts. Barely watchable Not worth going out for nor even watching on your DVD screen. Lacking plot, cohesion & drama. Val Kilmer is not like a good old wine; Fatty, heavy, clumsy and without any ability to show any emotion. He looks like a stoned junkie. Boring characters, boring storyline, no acting, predictable outcome.

Totally confusing film where an American doctor is conveniently confused with someone mixed up in jewelry smuggling. Val Kilmer, as the doctor, certainly knows how to take care of himself, for someone supposedly not the person he is suspected of being. He thwarts two KGB-like assassins who have ordered him to dig his own grave. He survives a train leap.

The film reaches the point where you don't know who the good or bad guys really are. You don't know who to trust or not to trust.

In the midst of all this, he falls for a blond bombshell, an agent who is undercover pretending to work for the bad guys. She may help him out of jams, but she can't do much for this movie.

Kilmer phones this one in. He must have had a few free weeks between theatre engagements and thought a free few weeks in Europe would be nice. Though he obviously spent too much time at the hotel banquet table. At one laughable point he's taken in by one of the groups who offer to help change his identity. Kilmer's picture is on the front page. What do they do? They give him a change of clothes and send him back out on the street with the same long hair and beard. Kilmer must have needed it for his next role.

Isabella Miko is probably the most well-developed character of the movie, which isn't saying much. Her loyalty throughout the movie is ambiguous. She carries her role with some energy, more so than everyone else, who come across as gray shadows in comparison. Maybe its her blonde hair or her cleavage.

The various agencies / groups / organizations plotting against one another are unclear. They sport varying accents and speak different foreign languages. Are they government / private / terrorist? Some carry badges, but are they real? In the end, you figure out that a private company is currently buying diamonds from a "cartel" and is offered an alternative deal. A shadowy group offers them access to a government minister who can give them a pipeline to diamonds mined within his country's borders at discount prices. This shadowy group is competing with the cartel, who is determined to stop the deal. Several characters appear to work for more than one side, but which side is not always clear.

The premise itself is silly if you think the reason the girl, Katrine, helps Kilmer's character is that quick kiss at the start. I thought she only helped him because she didn't want an innocent guy killed just so the cartel can make more money. What is silly is that a guy smart enough to become a doctor is dumb enough to do absolutely nothing to change his appearance even after he sees his photo on the front page of the newspaper. No shaving of the beard, no haircut, no hair dye, in fact he doesn't even change out of his tuxedo jacket until someone tells him to do so. Most 10-year-olds are far better at hide and seek than his character.

I found the use of cell phones in the early 1990s to be so dumb it was funny and about what you'd expect of such a lackluster story. Some filmmakers seem to think that if you don't have a good story it will go unnoticed if you add enough twists and turns. Not so in this case. Kilmer didn't even try to do well or even act interested. The performances from everyone else ranged from good to excellent and the actress playing Katrine will hopefully go on to much better films than this, she's certainly pretty and talented enough. Kilmer seems to be following in Steven Segal's footsteps but if he dieted and worked harder he could still hope for better.

Spoiler Alert

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Thin (and thinly disguised) rip-off of Hitchcock's North By Northwest.

Val Kilmer plays innocent Dr. Nicholas Pinter (Cary Grant/Roger Thornhill) mistakenly confused for non-existent John Charter (George Kaplan). This mistaken identity is exploited by spies who had been using the non-existent Charter/Kaplan to divert attention from the real spy, Izabella Miko as Katrine (Eva Marie Saint/Eve Kendall). Along the way Pinter/Thornhill and Katrine/Eve fall in love and the inexperienced doctor/advertising executive manages to kill a few bad guys and save the girl and live happily ever-after.

Save the trouble and get the original. The Saul Bass title sequence alone is better than this drivel.

Val Kilmer was once one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Great movies instantly come to mind such as Top Gun (1986), Willow (1989), The Doors (1991), True Romance (1993), Tombstone (1993), Batman Forever (1995), Heat (1995), The Ghost and The Darkness (1996), The Saint (1997), and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005). Unfortunately Val Kilmer's career has been marred by numerous flops and a reputation as one of the most difficult actors to work with. Nowadays Val Kilmer is keeping his career alive in direct-to-video movies and he is now a shadow of his former self. I thought Kiss Kiss Bang Bang would have resurrected his failing career although it did start to breathe new life in Robert Downey Jr's career before Iron Man (2008) catapulted him back into the big time.

Val Kilmer plays Dr Nicholas Pinter, an American doctor working for Doctors Beyond Borders during war torn Bulgaria in 1992. Dr Pinter helps a mysterious woman named Katrine played by Izabella Miko escape from a would-be assailant following a close brush with death following a case of mistaken identity where Dr Pinter is believed to be a spy.

It's a case of "been there done that" with Double Identity which has been done before with the Alfred Hitchcock classic North by Northwest (1959), however the end result is nothing short of pathetic, boring and uninspiring. I felt like everyone was sleepwalking through this thriller. Val Kilmer has packed on the kilos here and all of the charm and sex appeal he had in the prime of his career has been lost.

Apart from the fact this movie was really bad, it's a shame to see a quality actor like Val Kilmer waste his career away in rubbish such as this. Unless something promising comes up for Val Kilmer, it looks like his career is going to be stuck in the wilderness for a long, long time.

1/10