Filmic Friday 8

Movie: Double Down

Format: Digital (I think?)

By: Neil Breen

There are no words.

There are no goddamn words.

You guys thought the 70s Captain America was bad? No.

Mind, the movie isn’t Pocket Ninjas levels of stupid – it’s just…

Nothing can describe a Neil Breen movie.

Breen defies description.

And he’s making a new one.

Awed poetry aside, we watched Double Down last Friday, and it was certainly… something. It played out the way movies do, with moving pictures and sound and credits, but… it was not like any other movie I’ve seen.

No one knows where those quotes came from.

In my lifetime, I’ve had the dubious honor of viewing roughly half of this Las Vegas filmmaker’s oeuvre. Most of the movies follow the same basic pattern: Neil Breen plays a Marty-Stu protagonist who is trying to save the world somehow and succeeds based on some truly shaky science or straight-up magic.

This movie is no different.

I’m going to try to explain Double Down’s plot, such as it is, but bear with me if I get… off track. The movie induces a state not unlike post-dental surgery haze.

Neil Breen is playing a man named Erik (I think), who is a god-tier hacker who wants to stop all the wars or something to that effect via… well… terrorism, to be honest. The guy is shown dumping anthrax into what’s probably Lake Mead, thus killing the entirety of Las Vegas, but no one dies. Just lots of fish. We’re already getting lost here, aren’t we?

So Breen wants to stop bad things from happening using three or four laptop computers that are never, ever turned on, about as many ancient flip-phones, and two Direct TV satellite dishes clamped to the trunk of his car. Which he lives out of. Also, he seems to exclusively eat tuna out of a can. Actually, he tells us this in the ETERNAL VOICEOVER. The whole movie seems to be narrated. Badly. By Breen.

Yes, that's three phones. He uses one to steal a car, later...

Come on, dude, that's just upsetting.

Breen had a girlfriend he wanted to marry, but the government wanted to control him so they assassinated her? I think? Someone offed her. The red dot was hovering on his face briefly, so I opt for the idea that she just wanted out by whatever means necessary, because that scene contains the only emotive acting either of them show in the entire movie.

EMOTIONS!

Also… ech.

Nothing about this is good. Oh god... [except the editing here, that is awesome]

I’m sorry you had to see that. Btw, are you enjoying the edits and screencaps my Film & Editing Friendo grabbed for my? Thanks Film & Editing Friendo! These are tops!

Breen’s character is maybe hallucinating the whole movie, because he’s got his dead girlfriend in a body bag and now she’s a skeleton. Except that sometimes she’s supposed to be back to life because he goes running into the desert every time there’s hair spilling out of the body bag. I wish I was kidding.

Neil, that's not how a dakimakura works...

And suddenly, there’s a subplot about a magic rock that he tries and fails to cure a kid’s brain cancer with. Spoilers, she dies and there’s no impact in the rest of the movie.

He has a shootout with invisible people at one point while wearing a vest that I’m pretty sure could get him arrested since I know this guy hasn’t earned a single one of those medals…

I'm preeeety sure there's a law about this...

After a while, the CIA or FBI or… honestly, it’s unclear… decide that they need the guy who’s actively setting up and causing terrorism for stupid & shaky reasons to do them some favors and give him, apparently very bad, instructions to kidnap/murder some people.

It’s a common misconception that he murders the wedding chapel couple, but we see them drugged out on a lawn where he leaves them. By the way…

IT WAS THE WRONG DAMN COUPLE!

The correct couple have already killed themselves because they know that Neil Breen is coming. Neil also kidnaps some other dude we’re supposed to get stoked about, but the dude is mumbling the whole damn time.

Uh... pay attention to that fake-ass beard...

Eventually, and arbitrarily, we come to the ridiculous climax of the movie where a group of bad guys are trying to have a shootout with Breen and these assholes:

They're never properly explained, to my knowledge. WHO ARE YOU?!

There’s one last really fantastic scene in this movie during the shootout, but I’ll let someone who is much better at describing this madhouse of a film do the show & tell.

So that’s Double Down. A film made almost 100% by Neil Breen, who would like us all to forget that he’s something like a real estate agent or something like that.

It’s a great movie to watch in a group. Do not attempt this film alone. Do not. Also, if you’re an editing guy, like Film & Editing Friendo, he has discovered something. By trying to go through the movie to get random screenshots (because he’s awesome like that), F&FF has discovered that exactly every five minutes, there’s a random stock footage shot of Las Vegas and the desert. Every. Five. Minutes.

Thank you so much for sitting through that movie, even in randomized bursts, Friend.

Also, just to plug the madman behind these weird-ass movies, Mr. Breen has a new movie coming out called “Twisted Pair”

Remember what I said about all his movies being about him basically having a weird messiah complex?

Yeah.

Expect a blog on that one some day :P

I leave you with a film rating of a tuna can out of 10.

Seriously, guys, only watch this with people you can trust.

Here’s a nice song to close out your day (possibly unrelated, but I’ve always liked it)

Now, Go Enjoy Something!

FC

[All screenshots were got for me by my friend except the poster, that’s from imdb]