The Worst Idea Of All Time - Review: Double Down

Episode Date: September 26, 2018

It's the final Neil Breen pitcture to be reviewed by the boiz but the first feature made by the Machine himself. This movie, as per usual, challenges the very notion of motion picture production. Breen places himself, and his floating balls in a pool, in a heroic role where he definitely has no interest in underage women. Strap in. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Las Vegas, where anything goes. Enjoy it while you can. I'm about to end it all. My name is Aaron Brand. I always thought I was doing the right thing and preparing for life. I was the first in my class in college in computer science. I joined the military and became a fighter pilot and won many medals for distinguished service. I'm now a covert agent, a mercenary for any nation that wants to control another. I don't need much to live on anymore. I just eat tuna out of the can and live in the car. I control access to anything and everything, even from my little simple, brilliant setup. My orders from another country are to shut down the Las Vegas Strip.

For two months. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. And welcome along to this special, I guess, episode? Patreon edition release for the worst idea of all time. In which myself, Guy Montgomery, and my esteemed associate, Tim Batt, have just watched the first of what became a pretty girthy canon in Neil Breen's filmography, the 2005 critical and blockbuster smash Double Down, an edgy action thriller set in Las Vegas during a terrorist attack.

A brilliant computer loner takes control of the city in the attack as he fights with his fits of overwhelming depression and obsessions with love and death. Tim, how are you? I'm depressed and anxious, confused and aroused. No, I'm good, man. So watching Conditions were an interesting one today. No, I'm good, man. So watching conditions were an interesting one today. Woke up in the morning, and so Zoe, my now wife,

gets ready for work pretty crack of to go and fix all the people, being a doctor. And usually I lie in bed like the piece of shit I am for another sort of 90 minutes or so while I mentally prepare for the day. But this morning she came back out of the shower and was doing her hair and stuff and saw me with a tablet fixed to my face just absorbing uh the one remaining gem that we haven't absorbed yet of of the brainiverse and uh it was a pretty wild way to watch i had a lot of nightmares last night and i think it was because i knew what was coming this morning and weirdly this probably isn't related but i noticed i've got like a bunch

of scratch marks on my belly that were not there when i went to sleep but i do not know how they got there so i think the brain has uh performed some sort of stigmata ritual upon me. That is certainly eerie stuff. Unknown, unidentified scratch marks. Are you sure Zoe wasn't getting freaky with you while you slept? Or maybe you weren't nervously itching during the film? I mean, Guy, you know this about me. I bite my damn nails. I don't think I could give myself those marks if I wanted to.

It's a real mystery the only thing i could think of is is maybe zoe's diamond ring but that would wake me up anyway it doesn't matter the point is i had a very uh restless sleep knowing what was coming this morning uh and then started my day off right with a bit of brain in my face understood just for those of you listening if you missed it you did hear the words diamond ring a very cool do you sleep with your wedding ring on tim yeah i do i actually it's it's off right now because i take it off all the time but yeah no it's on that is the most suspicious behavior yeah it was always i'm in my marital bed but as soon as i'm i do it with my watch as well whenever i'm like wear it because i don't wear jewelry if i'm wearing anything i'll like sort of play with it and i'll take it off while i'm doing shit

anyhose uh hey listen i'm gonna open up with this guy. I kind of reckon this was Neil Breen's best movie. What say you to that? Interesting and somewhat valid. I just, I mean, actually, I'll let you share forth with why you think this is. And then I've got, I have a reason which I, I mean, I don't find, I don't think any of his films qualify as his best. I think that that would insinuate that find i don't think any of his films qualify as his best i think that uh that would insinuate that there's some value in any of them but i i think i understand why you

might have found this to be his best and so you tell me and then i'll validate it against what i've written down there is story there is a somewhat cohesive story to what's happening we've got a character what i liked in this one is that at the start of the film he just front loaded with a whole bunch of exposition he was like here's what we're doing today and we got to know that he he had a childhood sweetheart she died he is the smartest computer hacker on earth. He has magical powers, which he gets pretty early in the film. He's always got magical powers and he's always good with computers.

But I actually wrote down, the first thing I wrote down when I was watching it was, intro, not long enough. You've got to respect Neil Breen's, you know, his, what's the word? His sort of belief or commitment to, no, just to abiding the main tenet of film, which is always show, don't tell. You just got to, you know, you got to tip the hat at the amount of exposition done

in his relentless, never-ending opening monologue, which, if you're curious, Tim, and I think the listener might be, I have in front of me. What do you have in front of you? My name is Aaron Brand. I always thought I was doing the right thing and preparing for life.

I was the first in my class in college in computer science. I joined the military and became a fighter pilot. I won many medals for distinguished service. I've always between this world and the other. I'm now a covert agent, mercenary for any nation that wants to control another. I met the love of my life when I was seven and stayed with her forever. We loved each other and we're getting married. I joined my country's secret strategic support branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency

to fight terrorism around the world and became the best agent they ever had. I developed a way to control any computer or satellite the government had. The fact that I became so digitally, electronically powerful scared my government as well as others. It was that power that caused them to assassinate my fiancé and break my heart forever it caused me to re-evaluate what i was doing for my country and that maybe other countries would be interested in my services after all i controlled access to

the national geospatial intelligence agency i control access to anything and everything even from my little simple brilliant setup which i just like to insert yeah it got me too because like not five or ten minutes later he he runs through also in uh you know in monologue his brilliant setup which is uh satellite dishes five laptops six cell. And that's all he puts on the list. But the other big ticket item that cannot be mentioned enough is Tuna. Lots and lots. It is the star of this film. It is the uncredited hero of the adventure that we're on the entire time.

Tuna saves the day. Tuna is what this film is all about so we are led to believe no not led to believe we are told explicitly by this story's narrator that this is a super genius this is the smartest man that's ever lived and he lives in his car in the ari desert, and he subsists entirely on tinned tuna. That's it. That's all he eats. It's all he needs. It's a Mercedes.

I'm not sure what era, but they're leather seats. All I could think when I'd see shots of him waking up in the beating Nevadan sun was that's going to get so hot. Yeah. He's frequently sleeping next to the car though which i find very strange he's um he's often just on the ground in the beating sun like falling

asleep i'm like dude slip slop slap and rap which is um perhaps not a turn of phrase familiar to our american listeners but in new zealand you get taught the sun is not to be trifled with. You put a hat on, you chuck some sunblock on there, son. That's right. Do you know why, America? Because we are beneath a gaping hole that you and no small part

have assisted by pumping your dastardly greenhouse gases into the sky. New Zealand and Australia, the sun is a different beast. Truly it is. Tim?

Yes? Would you like me to continue, to finish off this monologue? Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought I was done. No, no, no. No, there's a little bit more. And then you can continue telling me why you think this is his greatest work.

Let's do that. Sorry, I'm nodding. We're on video Skype. I can nod at Guy. You go, Guy. I feel like we're on the same page. So, after my little simple brilliant setup, On video Skype, I can nod at Guy. You go, Guy. I feel like we're on the same page. Sorry. After my little, simple, brilliant setup.

My girlfriend and I always wanted to have children, and now all of that's been taken away from me. I work as a freelance agent now for many countries, making millions of dollars on many various covert assignments. Interesting that he would have the option to not live in his car off of canned tuna and yet he does i've been giving away the money to children support charities all over the world orphanages hospitals and schools and to support the evacuees of natural catastrophes all over the world like hurricanes like katrina i can do better for them the most mismanaged and dishonest governments can.

My orders from another country are to shut down the Las Vegas Strip for two months. And that's the entry point to the film. Yeah, it's a big job in the film. I thought it was one month. That is what we're all here to do we're all here it's kind of like an it's an ocean's 11 right if you had done the most amount of mescaline you can do before you die and your brain has uh damaged itself irrevocably and then you set out to write a film i'd like to say uh now this might be recency biased but um on a flight as recently as yesterday in fact i watched uh michael bay's

1996 action thriller the rock and neil is that an escape from Alcatraz one? or am I thinking of Sean Connery's The Rock wait did Michael Badry yeah yeah so you got Connery, Cage Nick Cage, Ed Harris and Ed Harris is like he's a mercenary who is he's frustrated by the

US government's treatment of like war you know victims of war. And so he takes Alcatraz with a bunch of tourists as hostage. He takes Alcatraz and he's got chemical weapons pointed at San Francisco. And he wants $100 million or he's going to blow them up. And Nick Cage and Sean Connery, essentially an odd couple, have to work together. And I couldn't help but see a lot of similarities. Only the key difference is Neil Breen has cast himself in every role. an odd couple have to work together and i couldn't help but see a lot of similarities only the the

key difference is neil breen has cast himself in every role so whereas in the rock you've got someone playing you know like the bioterrorist uh you know you know i can if a chemist essentially nick cage is like uh he can fix all the you know bioterrorism that's being threatened sean connery's the sort of uh he's a master of you know various different things and then uh ed harris is the mercenary neil breen's literally taken upon him all of that conflict and all of that responsibility and put and boiled it down to it to one role we're dealing with similar similar themes uh and it's incredible it's it's interesting this is how neil brain works though usually in it's like he's writing a book but in the movie because usually when you're dealing

with the medium of film you can show people stuff so you do so you tend towards the visual um but what neil brain does especially in this film is for the big ticket items he will generally describe what he's trying to do out loud rather than show you those things because it's easier and in some ways perhaps that is um something that more storytellers should should take advantage of in film tim that is that is exactly why I suspected you found this to be his most comprehensive or satisfying work. Because he literally, he grew in confidence from making this and thought he would start experimenting with alternative storytelling techniques like dialogue. And that didn't work out so well for him but if he like it does have you know the

central conceit of his story is there the whole time because if you ever if you ever lost if you ever at bay like whenever you get bored which happens inevitably in every neil breen film he's right there and it's like monotonous drone but he is right there to say hey here's what's happening in this movie right now and it does it just sort of keeps things as close to on track as possible it's a poorly made train but it's a train yeah um however this shouldn't be conflated with the story itself making any sense so the the train that we are the train that we're on is uh misshapen and he's used sort of like old cartwheels from uh from stage coaches of old uh fixed to some sort of locomotive device which we're not even sure how the thing's being powered

to be honest he keeps shoveling cats into a fire and the thing keeps going forward uh but he does sort of at length explain to you what we are on absolutely it shouldn't work and it doesn't and to to further that analogy i'd like to say that you know in spite of a rather large body of evidence that this is not the best train that's ever been made or a train that would warrant you know uh making more trains necessarily or trying to refine the current model you're on he has taken this experience as a huge vote of confidence at Breen Engineering Co. And I think that's why the trains that have followed have just barely resembled trains.

Because, you know, because he sort of did it. This one's not even, this doesn't go on tracks anymore. What you've done is you've got a can of axe body spray and you've let the end of the nozzle on fire and then you've tied it to a paper airplane i mean what are we dealing with here brain that's that's exactly the thing uh and it's just i'm not yeah i'm not gonna lie like also it's probably the most, uh, beautifully shot in a weird way. Was it shot on film? Because it had all of that,

like all of the grain and stuff that you associate with. I noticed that as well. I would, I actually Googled it briefly, but I couldn't find an answer, but I suspect it was shot on a super eight, eight millimeter. Cause it does.

It looks way nicer than his other like digital films and it gives it this nice kind of weird music video vibe to it it's quite cool yeah it kind of it kind of elevates it it does yeah it's quite a forgiving format because any poor artistic choice you make as long as it's bold enough comes across as just like super artful when you're shooting on film yeah and i i mean i guess it's not a bad order to watch the brain films to see this one last because it does i think give you a nice idea of the full circle that you know the the an idea of his creative process through the ages uh because he he returns to similar uhifs, similar themes, obviously. I mean, don't say similar guy.

He's made the same film four-ish times now, and we've watched them all. There's always so many laptops, it is absurd. Like, the guy loves... The more laptops he can fit in a movie, the better. So frequently in this film, we are treated to Neil Ben desperately tapping buttons on clearly off laptops that are just sitting around in his in the trunk of his car he just pulls out five laptops and he'll start tapping like one key over and over again the screen's not on brain

you know i don't care if you've got a satellite dish hanging outside you know the the tail end of your car the fucking laptop's not turned on my dude it's the screen is never on it's true uh is also it's it's less intense but there is uh one very uncomfortable nude scene in this film although either to his credit or detriment possibly both uh it's the first sighting of brain balls that I've ever seen. There's a weird reverse shot where he's pantsless and just poking out between his two legs and his monumental thigh gap, which really was fucking chubbing me up,

something chronic. You just see a little essence of scrotum peeping through the curtains. Is this on the water that you're talking about? Yeah, yeah. He's side by side with his uh deceased fiance he's sort of floating as though he's dead in solidarity i think i think it's worth setting this up a little bit there's a scene where we are treated to like a flashback of him proposing to this woman who gets shot at the start of this actually do you know what good on him for messing around with the chronology stuff as well that's kind of neat nice little attempt at sort of a memento man

that's the that's the luxury of an absolutely total uh you know voiceover narrative is that you can essentially get in there and do whatever you want and then just explain it away in the booth have a good muck around so we see him uh yeah in a hot pool or something or a swimming pool and uh he's you know we assume he's in trunks or something he which is fine we're just shooting from the the top half up but the woman that he's with his fiancee is deeply uncomfortable to be being filmed uh topless i thought she was naked but then there's a close-up and it reveals that she's wearing like flesh-colored uh small the insinuation certainly was meant to be that she is naked she couldn't look more uncomfortable

the angle that she is on while talking to brain is like hiding every inch of her body possible from the camera which you know good call good call you uh you were not in a safe environment that was the right move and it must be hard for actors because you never this was his first film you don't know if you're actually dealing with a genius that you just kind of don't understand yet and you you've often got to throw yourself at the mercy of these madmen. Luckily, this woman held back a bit. So, you know, she gets killed, and her lifeless body is floating on the water face down.

And Brain lets out a very funny cry when she dies. And then he joins her on the water. So they're like two sea otters hand in hand but he's not dead he just assumes the same position she's in but obviously dude's got um floatable balls attached to him so we we get a little taste and it's you know it's all it's uh he goes back on that in future films it It's, you know, it was the Breen of times, it was the Breen of times.

But I thought, it's the first time I've seen Breen go whole hog in terms of nudity offered. And, well, not whole hog, but, you know, he was pushing the limits of his own comfortability, I think. He was young at the time as well. This is the most handsome Breen we've had.

That's the first thing I thought. It's probably also because it's shot on what you called Super 8 or whatever. But like, and it's the youngest he is in any of the films. And it's probably, there's an element of release, I think, where it's like, I know that it's almost over. So I can allow, I can let my guard down a little bit. I can let Breen in, which is a great name for a doco for Neil Breen. Let Breen in.

Let the Breen in. Or what about... The thing is... Is there something called... There's something called lean in? The perfect amount of delay on this connection that this will probably keep happening. The thing is,

is it's all comparative, as you were saying about the film. So the handsomest Breen is stillil breen at the end of the day what i chortled at heartily at the beginning is that we are led to be uh we are led to believe that he is the same age as the woman that he's with which is obviously untrue. It is so apparently untrue. Because he says. We met when we were seven. And then we see two children who are the same age. And then it like flashes forward.

Brain's got a good 15 years on this woman I think. Absolutely. It's like you can't just say stuff Neil. You have to make it believable. You can't just say anything but i kind of but again this is his oeuvre isn't it it's just like guess what i am the smartest man alive i'm a super genius computer hacker and the government's after him it's like oh okay that's okay i love it here we are the thing is there's a certain uh a certain delightfully consistently flawed logic in thinking that if people are still watching this movie after an hour,

that he hypothetically could call the president and say, it's me, give me the president, contact has been made. And within the world of the film, why wouldn't that happen? Because so far, literally anything he says says can happen he can will anything into existence which is why he vaguely explained that tommy's got magic powers because otherwise you can't you can't break into this impenetrable world as soon as you know he's got magic powers he's the best computer hacker in the world he's forlorn he's heartbroken he's love lostorn, he's heartbroken, he's love lost, you know, anything's possible. However, does he have magical powers? Because in an accidentally self-referencing bit of the film, which I find so fucking funny,

he somehow just comes to the belief all by himself that he is endowed with these magical powers because he finds a bit of pyrite, otherwise known as fool fool's gold which he holds up to the sun in awe of and then he's like well i'm i'm magic now that's me then he's at dinner which is never explained with some family it's not his it's definitely not his family there is a little girl there's a dude there's maybe a woman as well and they have a very strange conversation where neil breen apropos of nothing explains that he is uh delighted and bemused by the fact that everyone gets his job wrong being a freelance intelligence styled kind of maverick assassin he says everyone thinks it's explosions and gunfire all the time but it's not it's quiet we we do our things our computers digitally and then the girl goes and

gets brain a glass of water i think and while she's out of the room the dad announces that she she's got brain cancer and a very tommy wiseau kind of a reveal and then she comes back in brain puts his hand on her head again we don't know what the fucking connection or relationship is with brain in this family and then i think later on it's a real you you know what he thinks he's doing it's obvious to the audience what he thinks he's doing. But then he explained to her, he's like, I'm pretty sure I cured that girl's brain cancer. And it's like, why would you think that? What would lead you to believe that?

And then later in the film, he gets very confused because it turns out he has not cured the girl's brain cancer so he introduces this magical thread the only time he uses it is to attempt to cure this girl's brain cancer it doesn't fucking work so it turns out neil brain has been the fulsome idiot we suspected the whole time by his own creation and admission yeah it's i hadn't even considered that it's true he he really uh seeds and then follows up on his own shortcomings which is not something we get we get to see again it's it's the most vulnerable brain it's uh it's the brain machine man and obviously maybe i'm just getting soft in my old shade.

Old age, sorry. But, you know, he's done worse. You're right, he's done worse. But isn't that the most brain thing possible in a film career? That we've watched it out of order and we come upon his first film and we're like, you what this one's the best the man's learned nothing not only has he learned nothing he's getting worse as they go along because i really do stand by the fact that this is the strongest outing well it's it's sort of um the what yeah it is and the way it's told because all of his films have this sort of they're all so they're all so obviously it's like a friend trying to articulate their drug trip or or maybe you know like it's so

clearly so vivid to him everything he's communicating and experiencing and trying to say it means so much to him and it's so important that he lays this down so that everyone else can can have access to the same materials and understand the world as he does. But it's all in such soft focus. He can't quite grasp the essence of the dream, I guess. And so that's why a lot of it, it's tough to understand exactly what he's saying.

It's someone in a foreign language trying to explain something to you, very complex. And neither of you share a large vocabulary. There's the odd word here and there, which acts as a bit of a Rosetta Stone between your understandings. But by and large, there's someone who absolutely knows what they're trying to say and is talking very quickly and loudly at you and explaining very complicated things. But there's no entry point. It's impossible for us to understand. And we've all been guilty of it.

I mean, there are things that will appear in everyone's mind's eye which is so clear to them and then it's you know there's no worse and this is what you respect this is what you got to respect about him there's no worse feeling than trying to capture onto one of those moments or articulate uh that that feeling or that idea to someone and not being able to do it and then you catch yourself in the middle of the thought and you think oh shit do i sound like a raving lunatic right now and that's what separates the brains from the boys brains yeah is uh he has never caught himself mid-thought and thought hold on i'm maybe not articulating myself very clearly here uh what's some other stuff that's how you like that's how you fucking get four feature-length films under your belt tim don't pause to think that's why the first season of the podcast worked i don't i yeah i don't i don't i don't want to drag this back to politics as well but honestly

this is how we wound up with trump as well if at no point you analyze what you're doing critically you are unstoppable you are an unstoppable force no one can stop you because so much of our society and we didn't really know this until brain pulled out all these movies and trump got elected uh was being held back by people's own sense of sort of embarrassment or um just a lack of total self-aggrandizement or complete ego uh in the face of so much evidence to the contrary about how good you really are at your chosen thing um but if you just believe it in your heart and you ignore all the evidence there's that brain train it runs on dreams that's why we don't understand it that's why the physics of it don't work that's why from an engineering perspective the whole thing is nonsense because this is a vehicle fueled on dreams

that's and what i what i liked about this film as, which I wish he had used more in his other films, he uses it a little bit but not as much, is his very liberal use of stock footage. It's everywhere. We're treated to interiors of sort of a NASA control room scenario. There's a bald eagle staring at the camera for various moments. There's a large amount of birds taking flight. There's some beautiful shots of the, I think, either Hoover Dam, maybe even the Grand Canyon.

I mean, it's used liberally and without any regard for what it's contributing to the story. Tim, so long as we're here, though, as we have championed the idea that he's almost cobbled together a cohesive whole here, and I struggled through the middle to last parts with following exactly what was happening. His mission, as we understand, is to shut down the Las Vegas strip for two months. Yeah.

Who is he doing this for? How is he going about it? And what are the results? Unless I miss something, I don't think it's ever made clear exactly who this is for he does make reference to the fact that he works for various world governments and just like a lot of different players and uh i don't think he ever explicitly says who this one's for his plan of attack as i understand it is to use the satellite network that he's hacked into to release a electromagnetic pulse above las vegas that will take out all the electrics but then he

also dabbles in uh what's that powder called that kills you? Anthrax. Anthrax. There's some anthrax stuff in there as well. There's one moment, there's a sequence where he's walking down the strip and he has a bag of flour, which we are told to believe is anthrax. And he rubs it on someone's arm and he's like,

I'm a master of disguise. I am undetectable. No one will know that I've released anthrax. It's like, you just put a bunch of flour on a guy's arm he definitely felt that he's like that man won't even know but he'll be dead within five minutes yeah a guy would definitely both see and feel what you've just done also he is he's just putting on his arm with his own bare hand the The idea that exposure to air tension this way will...

Be fair to Breen. He's wearing a surgical glove at that point. I missed the glove. And I think that papers over all remaining questions. Now, his plan, again, as I understood it from the pigeon film... That's the only way to understand it, Tim. that's the only way to understand it tim is uh he has set up diversions i think to draw away the authorities away from the central point of the las vegas strip when the big shit happens so there's other events like bombs timed bombs or something i don't even know if he explicitly

says what those other diversions are but there's other diversions in surrounding towns that he's set up and he says at the end that he doesn't know if he he's like run out of time to stop the diversions but he can he has a crisis of conscience where he pounds the ground of the las vegas nevada desert and he says damn it i can't do it i'm an american i love this country i'm an american in an act of unbridled patriotism and decides that he uh he can't go through with the terrorist plot after all so he he he tries to undo it again honestly i just it. I can't remember what happened at the end, and I just watched it. We've got the usual pantheon of a senator, some intelligence officials who we're led to believe are the CIA and FBI barreling the camera

while a sky background is the backdrop for their head, saying, go to code orange. Go to code red. That's red that's right evacuate the hotel he also he also says i've uh organized a conference call and then the footage the the footage that is laid beneath that audio track is him standing in the desert with three different like two early 2000 cell phones held up next to each other. Oh my God. His idea about, do you know,

this was a movie that I, one of my early thoughts was I really want to know if he can operate a computer in real life, even now in 2018. Because he's such a fan of the potential of computers, but I don't think he has any understanding of how they work at all. That's right. They're versatile for him, though, because they explain away a lot of... His assumption is that anyone watching one of his movies knows nothing of computers or

technology because it's literally like oh yeah i'm really good with computers while he holds up six computers and you imagine that the brain heads the brainiacs are gonna go oh yeah look at that six computers you gotta be kidding me what world does it mean you're good at something? It's like, I am the world's greatest skateboarder. I have half a dozen skateboards. This is how Tony Hawk got to where he is today. He just, he like would skate on four skateboards simultaneously. They have two on each feet. It would hold and brandish various skateboards.

Oh man. He's got a satellite dish that he rolls around with in his car and the boat just rattling around with an unimaginably large amount of tinned tuna. There's so much tuna in there. We haven't spoken about it yet. He shows us there's so much tuna. When he first introduces tuna

He's saying I live in my car And I eat nothing but tuna And he spills a lot of tuna on his crotch And he goes to the trouble of Including in the film Him pulling over Like to deal with the tuna spillage he's had

This is not a smart man This is not a genius computer hacker who uh who has captured the digital sphere i i don't know man um do you know what was good about this one as well was the music the soundtracking i actually found compelling and emotive i think a lot of um classical sort of stock music i think which like sort of almost choral kind of uh christian chanting or you know psalm like or hymn like uh which certainly set quite a quite a distinct tone as opposed to kind of the dross that i think he conducts himself in future films it gives it um it elevates it it does elevate it that's for sure can i share with you something i saw in the credits

though if you would i i didn't watch the credits this time this is the first time i've ever seen this and it might be another bit so but this is this is the bit where I caught it and I took a screenshot, which I will share online. Sound recording. Eduardo Bejarano. Boom. Maurice Jolly. Lighting. None.

Makeup in here. None. None. Not even not mentioned. Specifically listed and established that there was no one doing it it's like he's gone oh fuck he's gotten to the end of the film and gone that's a thing that is in other movies i should put that in the credits but uh you know no one was doing it so i'll just put none and then of course we have the regular locations neil brain catering who do you think it's neil breen of course cast aaron brand okay can i can i ask you this do you think aside from his filmmaking the on camera the

post-production stuff do you think his uh abilities is a maybe as the catering have improved over the course of his filmmaking career it's really hard hard to tell. I would actually say probably, based on the evidence we're presented with in this film, all of the actors seem cagey and a little pissed off, and I know better than anyone, generally, that is a sign of low blood sugar. Well, can I say, tellingly though,

or maybe this is a sign that while he makes small improvements There's never enough Not a lot of repeat performances In the Breeniverse You know You've got Neil Breen Holding the fort

Time and again And then virtually All of the supporting players Sort of fade into the background Either out of embarrassment Maybe he's never been satisfied By the performance of anyone else But Maybe it's the catering

but it's worth saying I don't think I've seen a single repeat performer in a Breen film save for Neil himself I think you're right and it's not a huge cast but it's not no one we're often treated to like 3 seconds of a senator on screen

I think it would be fair to say that's a bit of a red flag and if you're looking at the canon of any director and they fail to draw one person to the filmmaking experience twice yeah say well it's probably something you're doing if you think of all the greats scorsese jim cameron scorsese and jim cameron they often go back to the same people that they know and love and have worked with and developed a relationship. But you're right. I'd be very, yeah, I'd love to know if there's been any performers

who have worked with Breen on several films. Or indeed anyone. That includes Boom Operators, Gaffers, Best Boys, whatever. Well, I feel like after his first filmmaking experience, whereas a lot of other people will say, okay, now I'm moving on to my career, let's upscale, let's get more hands on deck. It seems to me like Neil Breen said,

I can do this. What are you just standing there holding a fucking microphone pack? I can do that. This is why he'll forever be a man after my own heart because that is often an approach that I will take as well to similar results. Oh, man. Do you have anything else to add about Double Down, Tim?

I don't know where the title came from. Do you? I think his friend or his like frenemy, his best frenemy, Beale Nreen probably said, I think I'm going to make a short film talking about everything that's wrong with the world. And Neil thought,

double down on that. I'm going to make a feature. Fuck you, Beale Nreen. Because certainly nothing in the film suggested. That's good. I like that a lot. I'd like to say that I think you should watch this one. If you've been interested in these other reviews,

I think this one's the easiest watch, I think. It's a crisp 90 minutes. There's a bit going on. We're in several locations. Music will keep trekking along. You're treated to a whole bunch of stock footage. The performances are not good, but interesting. Actually, I'd just quickly like to put in a scene or a sequence

that we've glossed over entirely, in spite of it being almost interesting plot-wise, and certainly interesting in some regard at one point he takes there's two couples who have just gotten married in las vegas and he drugs a strawberry to give to one of them to to like pass out and and then he sort of drugs both of the newlyweds and he takes the man's body and he you know drags him out somewhere in the desert and then he goes of drugs both of the newlyweds and he takes the man's body and he drags him out somewhere in the desert and then he goes back into the car he's driving where he was previously just the cab driver

and says to the woman, we're married now. Welcome to Las Vegas, baby. And she says no and he goes yeah and then he gets on the phone and he said I've done the job to whoever he's being a mercenary for

and they say, you got the wrong couple. So he's got to go back and try and right this wrong. He first of all drags the still conscious woman he's just told he's married to the unconscious body of her new husband. And just as a quick addendum to that, he has written into the script that after waking up and being in a confusing car with a

stranger and being told she's just gotten married she actually comes around to the idea after 15 seconds she's like oh no he's like i don't want this marriage anymore this marriage is over when he finds out he's killed the wrong dude and she's like oh no no we i still want to be married to you and yeah so the guy's been killed she is in a drug induced amnesia state he drops her off, bless you and then he travels to try and find

the other couple who he was supposed to kill in the first place which he comes upon sitting on a rock weirdly and they've got red paint sort of bindi style on their forehead and then he says oh they took their own lives they knew what was coming fucking nothing has happened to you mate you've got to do a better job at makeup than that if you're going to try and sell some gunshot wounds and plus no one would shoot themselves in the forehead. It's crazy.

No, yeah, it's wild stuff. Oh, the skeleton as well. Look, we've got to bring up the skeleton. Before we started remembering all these superfluous details, the movie probably came close to sounding like it was not comprehensive. I don't know. Like, made sense yes that's the one

so close those words a kind of a body bag that's sitting out in the desert which I understood to be where he slept which was insane because obviously

it's going to get so hot in there that you die and also because obviously he sleeps in his car yeah but there's a moving wriggling like body in there at one point for a shot which i don't think is explained and then at one point

maybe one of the people who he kills is put in there and then at one point he opens it up and it's a skeleton so i don't fucking know what that means your guess is as good as mine yeah well i have no guesses uh look i i would agree with you tim i think if you are going to dip your toe uh this is the one for it i'm not going to go on record as saying is it's his best film but i will say uh it was the least upset i've been while watching a brain film and it was the most alone I've been as well so maybe that goes to say something about watching movies with you either in person or digitally Tim

what do you mean? I don't mean anything by it, just a man speaking his mind I don't even think that's true we haven't watched the rest of these together have we? we must have watched we've watched one together definitely at least one oh yeah oh yeah at least one yeah definitely but not all the others um yeah look

i'm i'm all right i feel like i've come out of the the cloud it's you know we're heading into mid-morning now local time so i'm feeling a little bit better probably overdue for a coffee all things being equal but um no do you know what in spite of the nightmares and the stigmata that I sustained last night from anxiety about this watch, I didn't like the film, but I didn't hate it nearly as much as I was anticipating. Could have been worse. And isn't that, at the end of the day, what we're all aiming for?

Isn't that the entry point to blend into society? For someone to look at the body of your work and say, well, you know what, Tim? It could have been worse. Thank you very much for listening, everybody. If you'd like to find Guy Montgomery online, you should Google him and his name will come up. He's on Twitter at Guy underscore Mont

and Instagram. Same handle, different content, except for occasionally when there's crossover. And I'm Tim underscore Bat and Tim Bat NZ on Instagram. I don't know why I'm shouting out the social media. Get that synchronicity going, my man. It just felt right. It felt like the thing to do.

So as you all know, so thus completes the era of Breen. The age of Breen is over now. We've been freed from its prison, which means we're throwing it back to the Deciders Club. Those who are supporting our plight on Patreon, which I've got to say right now um is the only thing keeping my rent paid uh so fucking good shout to you um support us on patreon if you

pay over ten dollars you get to pick which movie guy and i will be subjected to next and five dollars you get to listen to that content as soon as we record it and it comes out and then eventually we throw it uh onto onto the the main podcast stream later down the track bloody good stuff at the time of speaking i haven't cut it up just yet but we do we do have that amazing uh overlooked and undercooked project coming out so keep your eyes peeled and your ears frosty i look forward to the release of that uh i'd like to end i'd like to end uh this record with a quote from the film the last thing neil breen said in double down and then after that I will say my own thing just to

commemorate this period of our lives so the final thing Neil Breen says in Double Down forgive me it had to be this way which is a beautiful summation of his efforts and what I would like to say to you Tim and to those

of you listening at home is the Breen is dead. Long live the Breen. On each step with Peloton, from their pop runs to walk and talks, you define what it means to be a runner. Whatever your level, embrace it. Journey starts when you say so.

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