Movie Review: DOUBLE LIFE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 13th, 2023 / 04:06 PM

DOUBLE LIFE movie poster | ©2023 Paramount Pictures

Rating: R
Stars: Javicia Leslie, Pascale Hutton, Vincent Gale, Niall Matter, Carmen Moore, John Cassini, Kaaren De Zilva, Aaron Douglas
Writers: Mike Hurst and Chris Sivertson, story by Mike Hurst
Director: Martin Wood
Distributor: Paramount Global Content Distribution
Release Date: May 5, 2023

There’s a perfectly good concept propelling DOUBLE LIFE, and it is handsomely made. However, it plays out like either the pilot for a broadcast TV detective series like BIG SKY, with which it shares some plot elements, or else a procedural episode that focuses on the guest characters.

Jo (Javicia Leslie) manages a high-end big-city bar frequented by lawyers. One, ADA Mark Sutter (Niall Matter), is working on a big case involving industrial pollution. Jo sees Mark involved with some kind of handoff, but she doesn’t ask about it.

Jo and Mark are also romantically involved, as we see in the very softcore sex scene that runs under the opening credits.

Mark then has to leave. Driving home, he calls his wife Sharon (Pascale Hutton), and lies about why he’s late. While they are talking, Mark is run off the road. Detective Traxler (Carmen Moore) shows up at Sharon’s door to give her bad news.

Jo observes Mark’s funeral from a distance, but she and Sharon eventually encounter each other at his grave. Jo tells Sharon that she knew Mark from the bar, which is true; she just leaves out a few details. A tentative friendship forms between the two women.

An exchange of information about what Jo saw at the bar and Sharon’s last phone call with Mark lead both women to suspect that his death was no accident. They join forces to look into what happened.

In theory, this is all fine. But the screenplay by Mike Hurst and Chris Sivertson, from Hurst’s story, feels like it is constrained by timid instincts. No one, not even the villains, has any eccentricities. The set-up yields mild humor, but little suspense.

Things are hazy even when they could be much more specific. Jo explains her fighting and weaponry skills as being taught to her by an ex-military former boyfriend.

Worse, there’s a back story involving a terrible loss before DOUBLE LIFE begins, and it never occurs to anyone to attempt to discuss it; the person who suffered the loss doesn’t appear to consider how it might have affected the recent past. It feels like an attempt to add a psychological dimension that doesn’t receive the right treatment.

Leslie has magnetic gravity as Jo, and Hutton uses commendable restraint in depicting Sharon’s rage and pain.

Director Martin Wood makes good use of a wide variety of locations; DOUBLE LIFE is unfailingly good-looking. But we can’t get seriously invested in the whodunit aspects, and there’s so much push-pull between Jo and Sharon that the relationship doesn’t have much chance to develop actual depth. In the end, DOUBLE LIFE doesn’t live up to the potential of its premise.

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