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When Tommy Wiseau’s Room was released in 2003, it didn’t take long for audiences and critics alike to consider it Citizen Kane from bad movies.Wiseau, who wrote, directed, produced, edited, personally financed and starred in the film, decided to backtrack and say that the film was always meant to be a dark comedy rather than the serious drama he originally set out to make. However, there is one movie that confuses me more than that Roomand it’s Neil Breen Double Down.
Double Down, Breen’s 2005 debut boasts similar equipment to Wiseau’s work, but he plays it so straight that I’m not really sure if he’s honest and deceptive or our generation’s Andy Kauffman in the sense that he’s been trolling his audience for two decades for love to the game.
Suspense or satire?
Double Down is supposed to be a suspenseful thriller about shadow operations, computer hacking, bioterrorism, grief and revenge. The film’s synopsis on IMDB states that it is the “controversial story of a lone genius who shuts down the Las Vegas Strip… The government can’t stop him. When he hangs out with his dead girlfriend every night.”
On paper and at face value, Double Down sounds like a hybrid Hackers and John Wick movies, but what appears on the screen couldn’t be further from the description of the movie. I can only assume that this synopsis was also written by Neil Breen, who, like Wiseau, wrote, directed, produced, edited, personally financed and starred in his own film.
Terrorism With A Side Of Tuna
Neil Breen plays Aaron Brando Double Downand he is a jack of all trades. He’s a genius who has remote access to every government satellite, and his list of accomplishments is about as ridiculous as his denim vest that adorns his various medals of honor (of which there are many). After Aaron becomes so “digitally and electronically powerful”, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s covert strategic support unit, with whom he worked so closely in the past, feels threatened by his abilities and murders his girlfriend.
Through a flashback sequence, Aaron is swimming face down, completely naked, in a pool next to his dead girlfriend after screaming “uggghhh!” when she is fatally shot by a sniper lurking in the distance.
After receiving orders from another country to shut down the Las Vegas Strip for two months, Aaron gets to work with his “small, simple, brilliant setup,” which is five laptops, a handful of flip phones, and a few Dish Network satellites. attached to the trunk of his Mercedes.
Living a solitary life in the desert to covertly carry out his many acts of terrorism, Aaron drives around eating dry tuna straight from the can despite also being a millionaire. Although Breen’s numerous expositions suggest that Aaron Brand is an experienced mercenary of the highest order, he poses his greatest threat to humanity when he tries to drive while eating, completely undermining the film’s premise.
Do you lack self-awareness or are you in on the joke?
It may sound like I’m making this all up, but Double Down it’s full of contradictions and surprises that make me wonder if Breen is kidding.
Double Down features anthrax-injected strawberries, botched assassinations of newlyweds, secret government meetings taking place in grocery store parking lots in broad daylight, breaking into a Ferrari with a flip phone, curing brain cancer with a mysterious pebble, and Neil Breen sitting in the back of a car while freaking out we tap into several laptops that never seem to be turned on.
If you’re a “Breeniac” like me, you’ll notice that the kind of technical knowledge displayed in the Double Down is a through line across all six of Neil Breen’s films, as Fatal findingswhich are equally convoluted.
Doubling On Doubling
Tommy Wiseau may have reconnected Room as a dark comedy, but Neil Breen has consistently “doubled down” on being a legitimate filmmaker and being real. Whether he’s kidding or not, I’m grateful to have been born into a world where Neil Breen exists, because I’ve found so much joy in wading through his filmography that I may be definitively insane myself.
While you can’t find Double Down you can listen anywhere on streaming GenreVision podcast if you’re willing to fall into the same Breen hole I’m currently trying to escape.
