Three laughs: Double Down

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watvh them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.


Three laughs case #15:
Double Down (2005)
Director: Neil Breen

It's about time to get to the filmography of one Neil Breen. Double Down may not be his best movie, but it is the first, so let's begin there. Breen began as an architect and a real-estate agent, but he had aspirations for a movie career. Nowadays he is a director, actor, writer, editor and a producer with a sizable internet following.

The reason for this is because his style is so unmistakable. Breen is both akin to Tommy Wiseau in his delusions of grandeur and acting style, and somehow totally unpredictable and weird, no matter how many movies he makes. He  likes thriller movies with little suspense and big stakes that are informed to the viewer mostly through dialogue or voice-over over some stock footage. Usually, Breen is out to save the world with his hidden knowledge, superior hacking skills and/or magic powers from evil and shady military, medical or financial institutions.

While all of Breen's films have been made on a pittance, here he basically doesn't even have money to any other actors save for a few cameos. A lot of the fun of Double Down is the ingenuity of getting past this fact. Breen is a former government agent and hacker, who has ran away from his former masters because they killed his fiancée for some reason. Hiding out, he threatens the world with hidden biological weapons he has hidden in several cities and that he will kill hundreds of thousands of people if not left alone. Somehow, the film twists this premise so that he's the hero?

Logic is not big in these films, even though Breen likes to repeat lines and themes over and over again.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Breen's unenthusiastic line-reading is a thing to behold, it's like a parody of Steven Seagal done by Bob Odenkirk in a weird wig. Thus it's preposterous how he keeps finding even worse actors than himself. This film has plenty of flashbacks and so we are also treated to the scene where Breen's wife got killed in a pool. And boy, is she atrocious an actor. Even lines like YES! seem worse presented than in the cheapest porn you can find, no matter lines like "I can't wait to be your wife!" After this, she is shot by a sniper (though there's no wound on her back) and left to float on her face in the pool as Breen cries to some bloody orchids.

2. Between stock footage and Breen talking to powerful people with some dubious connections, every once in a while we have a scene with him either hacking on the laptops in his car, or killing an intruder. One of my favorites is when he announces, playground-style, that his desert base is protected by an invisible barrier. We then see a soldier walk awkwardly with an assault rifle. He suddenly falls down dead with blood in his ears.

3. There's a lengthy scene of Breen climbing a rock formation on the desert. The camera pans to show four AK-47's resting to a rock. Breen blurts out "Sorry to interrupt your lunch" and blasts away with his handgun with arcade machine sound effects and with blood sputtering to his face. It seems the scene means he managed to catch four mercenaries out to get him off-guard, yet without ever having one image of any of the would-be attackers. Avantgarde!