The Double 2011

Stephen Holden, New York Times: A tedious, impenetrable cat-and-mouse game involving Russian double and triple agents. Read more

Eric Hynes, Time Out: Like a Training Day for spy thrillers, The Double provocatively pairs Gere and Grace as a gray-green odd couple, only to unravel as the double-crossed absurdities pile up and the duo start trading bad Russian accents in a private Mexican standoff. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Like a stripper who gets naked too quickly, the lukewarm spy thriller "The Double" lays out its big plot twist early in the movie - and soon finds, shivering, that it has nowhere else to go. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: Roughly 99 percent of the time, if a movie that seems like it should be a big deal appears almost out of the blue, it's because it's lousy. The Double doesn't exactly buck that trend. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: It's simply not very good. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Ineptly realized in everything but its chase scenes (which are, I'll admit, pretty good). Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The twist in The Double slack mystery-thriller is revealed with a shrug about a third of the way in. After that, it's all about Gere looking grim, and Grace looking stricken as he learns what we already know. Read more

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: A barely warm dish of Cold War leftovers that shows its hand too early, then works itself into an increasingly implausible tangle of knotty plot developments without ever mustering much intensity. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: There's a sanded-off, textbook creativity to "The Double" that forsakes rich cloak-and-dagger textures for generic twists, hackneyed flashbacks and telegraphed moments of peril. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: When the story starts to fall apart you're left wondering if the film was worth all the money and effort that went into making it. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It soon devolves into a mess of slit throats and competing motives. Everyone, it seems, has a plot - except the screenwriters. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: The story makes no sense and leads nowhere but into a creaky buddy movie that can't round itself off without a last-minute hero falling on his sword to save another. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: If these characters ever had a motivation for their extreme behavior, it disappeared in rewrites. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: What can you say about a dull spy thriller that gives away its big "secret'' both in its trailer and the film's title? Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Rarely has Mr. Gere walked through any movie with so little energy and so much indifference. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Here is a movie constructed from basic parts at the Used Screenplay Store, with a character plugged in whenever one is required. Read more

Andrew Schenker, Village Voice: Whether it's the clumsy use of flashbacks, the air of manufactured portentousness, or the completely unbelievable casting of Grace in a role that requires a certain authority utterly lacking in the actor's performance, almost every move seems a misstep. Read more

Stephanie Merry, Washington Post: Questionable motives and unbelievable decisions are relatively small potatoes compared with the Sputnik-size plotholes. Read more