The American Breen: Double Down and the Joy of Bad Movies

Watching bad movies because of, rather than despite, their badness has been part of my life for almost seventeen years, since turning on Comedy Central and finding Mystery Science Theater 3000. Joel, Mike and the 'Bots could be pretty brutal in their dismantling of the junk they had to watch, and the show saturated movie culture to an extent I'm sure the producers of the "cow-town puppet show" never expected. Nevertheless, bad movies keep on coming.


MST3K tackled all of the various breeds of schlock, from standard issue B-Movies to rubber-suited Japanese monsters to westerns to disaster movies. Some of my favorites, though, were of a special breed: micro-budgeted fiascoes peddled by small-timers with dreams of being Hollywood big-timers. Movies like Red Zone Cuba, Time Chasers, and Manos: The Hands of Fate were extra-special because they weren’t made by professionals. They were made by regular people who watched movies and wanted to be part of the action (or make a quick buck), so they hit up relatives for money for film stock and drafted community theater folks for their casts (except for the lead female role, which invariably went to their special ladies). This the sort of bad movie I really root for. Maybe because I kind of relate to the aspirations behind them: my friends in 19th State and I have done a few shorts, and we stick, perhaps quixotically, to the notion that it is right and good to carve out our own niche in the film and video world in, of all places, Indiana. So I feel a strange kinship for a (possibly retired) Las Vegas real estate agent and the movie he made, Double Down (unfortunately, the Double Down website is inactive as I write this in February 2011).

Double Down insinuated itself into my life in the form of a press release Jennie received at work, pumping the film as a "controversial action thriller which questions the world of terror and death." It has since become an institution in our home, and among a small circle of friends, its stature is on the level of Plan Nine From Outer Space.

The real estate agent in question is Neil Breen, who wrote, directed, and produced the movie, as well as serving as musical director, casting director, and caterer. It certainly feels like the work of one man, driven beyond reason. Watch the 4 1/2 minute trailer (with sound) and use your imagination powers to stretch it to 80 minutes. The drift shall certainly be obtained. Lots of stock footage, lots of marshmallowy ambient music, lots of silent brooding, lots of narration. In film school, I was cautioned against relying too much on narration. Breen's movie is a lesson in what the result of ignoring such advice might look like. Breen, portraying some sort of Macguyverish spy/hacker/covert agent, pontificates vaguely, with an air of smug self-satisfaction, about the true nature of modern war and the silent, shadowy agents who are its players. While the cow-like regular folks worry themselves gray about nuclear war and big, spectacular acts of terror, Breen knows that the real danger is "chemical-biological." Cheap. Silent. Doesn't require a high level of scientific sophistication.


But Breen's character, Aaron Brand, isn't really a white bread type like MacGuyver. Nope; he's actually a rogue double (or triple or quadruple) agent, and his services are for sale to any country who can pay the price. He tools around in his sedan, using several laptops (some of which are cleverly hidden under rocks in the desert) and a trunkful of TV satellite dishes to conceal his identity, control satellites, rig elections and play with stock markets. "It's all very easy," he claims, cocky and assured of his God-like competence. Well, not total competence. His one source of sustenance is canned tuna, and he has some trouble keeping it out of his lap while driving and eating simultaneously. Ostensibly working with the US to ferret out a terrorist, his secret and ours is that he's actually the dude in question. Sly dog! His current assignment is to shut down Las Vegas for two months with his preferred flavor of terrorist act, a chemical-biological attack. To salvage our sympathy, he explains that his earnings all go to charities dedicated to natural disaster recovery and orphanages. As evidenced by the multiple medals of honor on his sleeveless denim vest, this man was once a warrior of unswerving patriotism. What could cause him to go so deliciously rogue?
A girl, duh. In a flashback, we see his virtually nude (I'm not sure if the flesh-colored thong she's wearing is supposed to be visible) girlfriend accept Breen's marriage proposal in the pool of a resort, only to be shot dead by a sniper and die in his arms. She floats away, ass-to-the-sky, as Breen screams, holding a bloodied flower in his hands. Then a jump cut brings him to her side, similarly posed, but with much less clothing. If he's wearing a thong like hers, he's done a much better job of disguising it. If he's not, you totally see his taint.

This is the kind of melodramatic scene that makes bad movies so much fun: moments of such sublime over-the-topness that you wonder about the psyche of their author. These moments are rare in this movie. It's pretty under-the-top. What truly amazes me about Double Down is how many of the basic movie building blocks it's missing. It's like listening to someone whose speech impediment renders them incapable of using verbs. Literally, there are only a handful of shots in the entire movie in which words are exchanged between people within the frame. Almost every conversation is constructed of one-shots. A typical one occurs outside the Luxor casino (the black pyramid that uses up enough energy in a single night to power a Six Flags for a year), where Breen has a rendezvous with some sort of CIA/NSA/WTF operative with stilted line delivery. Breen is shot from a low angle, shoulders up, against the blue sky, with no reference points to show where he is. He inexplicably changes the direction in which he's speaking, as if there's a third party there, maybe a dude who was running late and missed the chance to be in the establishing shot.

Conversations are only one small ingredient, though. There are long segments dedicated to stock footage. There are aerial shots of the desert, the Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas that were probably obtained from Nevada's tourism board. The "techno" part of "techno-thriller" is provided by stock footage of laboratories, satellites, and medical procedures. It's all held together with Breen's cinematic connective tissue of choice, hacky ambient music.

There are scenes in which something supposedly important happens, but Breen extends no appreciable effort to convey this importance. For instance, the scene in which a couple dudes (or husky, hairy-handed ladies, for all we know) exchange a huge brick of powdered anthrax at an airport. One dude sets it on the hood of a car. Money is exchanged. Other dude drops anthrax. It breaks open and a breeze disperses it into the air. In a voice over, Breen explains how deadly airborne anthrax is. We don't see either dude's face, it's not clear if Breen was actually present, and the dropped anthrax is handled so nonchalantly it may as well be multipurpose flour. Later, Breen and a couple other agents pick up the anthrax from some thugs. The anthrax is dropped again. Breen picks it up. Then, in voice-over, commands that the thugs be killed. There's a second-long burst of gunfire, during which no guns are actually depicted being discharged. We assume that the thugs are killed, by the satisfied look on Breen's face when he's talking on his cell phone in the next shot.

There are plenty of events of questionable relevance along the way. He mistakenly assassinates a newlywed couple, is visited by his dead parents, has multiple dream-meetings with his dead love, gets a hooker killed (charitably, this third event is only told via narration), receives a chunk of fool's gold from an old fart in the desert, and tries to cure a girl of cancer with said fool's gold. Eventually, he has a breakdown, realizes that living his double-life is tearing him apart, and decides he has to stop the attack on the strip. This is a particularly hilarious scene, in which Breen writhes around in the desert sand, beating on the ground and screaming "I'm an American! I'm an American!" With a few small exceptions, he's the only actor who displays any emotion at all, and by far the most enjoyable aspect of the movie is Breen's performance, a combination of macho lone-wolfery, smarminess, and intense outbursts of angst.

I'm sure that Breen never wavered in his belief that he was creating an impeccably crafted piece of cinematic art, but two lines of dialogue make me wonder. The first occurs during the dinner which also features the fool's gold cancer treatment. Before learning of the girl's illness, he drones on about the life of a super-secret covert agent. "The public perception of what we do for a living really constantly amazes me. They think all that we do is drive around and get caught up in spectacular car chases and huge buildings blowing up and wild gunfire and so on. That only happens in the movies..." Just not this movie. Maybe it's an ironic comment on the movie we're watching. Maybe Breen feels like he's enduring the ordeal along with the audience. Maybe it's not a coincidence that his last spoken line is an apology: "Forgive me. It had to be this way."

Being a movie-watcher I can honestly say that turkeys like this are just as much fun to me as a masterpiece like There Will Be Blood. We might not expect much of a movie made by a realtor with a cast of unknowns and non-actors and a budget so small that lighting and hair and make-up are credited to "none." But really, do we expect any movie at all? The mere fact that it's here, and available for $9.99 on a bare-bones, menu-less, special-features-lacking-DVD is pretty keen. I don't know if a higher profile would earn Double-Down a place in the world's heart akin to that of the Ed Wood canon. But it deserves to be in the conversation. This is me doing my part.