The Duplicate
The Duplicate
R | 23 May 2001 (USA)
The Duplicate Trailers

Journalist Karen Addams is fighting to keep her sanity -- it appears someone else has assumed her identity and is living her life better than she ever could. Losing a grip on her romance, her career and her friendships, Karen struggles to get her life back by exposing the impostor. But things take an unexpected turn when she discovers the true enemy is within herself!

Reviews
Claudio Carvalho

In Los Angeles, the journalist Karen Addams (Tiffany L. Paige) is investigating a mysterious case happened twenty years ago, when the owner of the Mansfield Theater, Kyle Mansfield (Harold Cannon), shot twice with a shotgun, killed his dog, and he was found covered of his own blood, but without any injure. She convinces her editor to have an interview with Kyle, who is bankrupted. Kyle gives a key of a room to her and says that he is the watcher of the place. Karen decides to open the door, and sooner she finds that somebody is using her identity, efficiently working for her and living at her place. She is promoted in her job when the criminal Greg Johnson (Trey Hardy) is arrested with her apparent support, but she claims she had never seen him before. When Greg meets her, she realizes that apparently they have been duplicated, and their evil doubles have opposite personalities."Deuces" is a low budget movie with very promising story that keeps the attention with the duplication mystery but the development is weak and the conclusion is a great deception. When the mystery is disclosed, the explanation is very silly; when the doubles are eliminated, the resolution is simply corny and conventional. I regret that the director / author has been so commercial and careless with the conclusion of his screenplay, otherwise "Deuces" could have been a great film. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Dublê do Medo" ("Double of the Fear")

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jbrown-19

The problem with this film, it seems to me, is the story. An earlier poster mentioned genre problems, and I think he or she hit the nail right on the head. If you're going to do science fiction (or horror, or mystery, or western, or what have you), you need to know something about the genre. Lip service needs to be paid to the hows and whys. Fantasy doesn't have to be realistic, exactly, but if things work differently in the film world from how they work in our world, we need some kind of explanation. Omitting details like this--at least lip service to them--is dangerous and sloppy.That said, there's a lot to like in this film. The public location work is good, and the camera work is generally unobtrusive but occasionally impressive. The dialogue is quite good, suggesting that the director/writer has some skill in this area (I'd recommend help with the story itself in future projects though). Some of the acting was very good.Budgetwise, the producers did a lot with a little, and the next effort might be a breakthrough. This one isn't it, and unfortunately it's the story that gets in the way ... and that's the one thing that's got to be there.

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justinq

I just want to set everyone straight here. This movie was written and directed by a good friend of mine and i was on set several times during the course of the shoot. By no means was any part of the budget devoted to the "cover" of the movie box. My friend Michael wrote the screenplay, produced and directed it himself. So any insinuation that the production couldn't "afford" a decent script is ludicrous. The whole movie started with the script already finished. Let me also mention that the cover art does in fact have nothing to do with the film and Michael Winnick had no part in this movie's retail. He was not even aware that it was released in any format whatsoever. The production company has the rights to use and repackage the film as they see fit and it was they who apparently played some kind of consumer game on you. No one creatively involved in the production was involved with its retailing.Anyway, I like the movie. The hotel clerk is especially crappy, but the phone company guy was hilarious. It's kind of like an X-Files episode but without Scully and Mulder (i.e. the last 5 seasons of the show). Anyway don't miss the Special Edition with all new special effects that Michael is re-releasing in theaters next year. Because now an entire generation has grow up not knowing what the hell this movie is.

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gazineo-1

First of all, it's hard to define in which genre (horror, sci-fi, thriller?) we could insert 'Deuces', because the movie worked all the time with some elements of all these kind of movies but with an absolute incompetence. The story of a woman who suddenly discover that she has a double, a twin 'persona', living by her side and doing odd things - including violent acts and even murder - is not a novelty. In fact, you must remember 'Doppelganger', with Drew Barrymore, another bad movie with the same theme. And that is all the story here, punctuated with some not gripping moments of shooting, cold blood murders and eerie scenes, especially the scenes taken at the Mansfield theater, the place where the doubles seems to appear after twenty years of interval. It's very difficult to be awaken during the movie, because you'll find that the problem here is not just a problem that affects the lady in distress, the journalist Karen Adams (played with a wood faced performance by Tiffany Paige. The movie tells us a story about an evil double creature with double boring style. A complete waste of time.

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