Rating: R | Runtime: 89 minutes
Release Date: May 5th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director(s): Martin Wood
Writer(s): Michael Hurst & Chris Sivertson / Michael Hurst (story)

You wanna back off?

When your film is about the wife (Pascale Hutton’s Sharon) and mistress (Javicia Leslie’s Jo) of a high-powered attorney who team up to uncover the truth of his murder, you better make him a saint (besides the adultery, of course). Director Martin Wood and screenwriters Michael Hurst and Chris Sivertson may go a bit overboard in that respect with Double Life, but you can’t necessarily blame them for trying to make the odd couple pairing at the center of the film as airtight as possible. Because Sharon should hate Jo. And Jo should hate Sharon’s husband (Niall Matter’s Mark) since he never told her he was married. Add the fact that teaming up to find answers seems to get them into dire straits with hitmen, shady government officials, and potentially dirty cops and maybe forgetting Mark ever existed is their best option.

While saying the film feels like an episode of a television drama generally connotes low budgets and subpar acting, I say it here because of the ways in which everything hinges on sob stories. Overcoming tragedy becomes these women’s identities to the point where Sharon and Mark’s shared loss can be used as an excuse for why he stepped out on their marriage (the script all but lets her blame herself by relating tales of grief pushing him away). And why does Sharon start to trust Jo? It’s not because she believes her when told she didn’t know Mark was married. It’s because Jo proves herself to be a loving daughter (two times over) under trying circumstances. Someone smarter than me could probably pick apart the ways in which these women are written and how Mark is always (mostly) absolved being a product of the filmmakers all being men.

If you get past those ham-fisted machinations, however, the result isn’t that bad. It still feels like an expanded CBS procedural, but overwrought manipulations don’t automatically erase effectiveness. By not letting Sharon and Jo trust anyone but the other—no matter how strange that might be considering their circumstances—their dynamic is allowed to be a nice mix of understandable friction and involuntary empathy. While the police (Carmen Moore’s Detective Traxler) drag their feet and Mark’s colleagues (Vincent Gale’s Larry and Aaron Douglas’ DA Sheldon Roberts) harbor secrets and duplicity, Sharon and Jo are following leads. Doing so means crossing into an underworld they’re surprisingly prepared to combat (thanks to Jo’s “Mossad or something” ex-boyfriend) while ruffling feathers and, perhaps, breaking the case wide open.

Hutton and Leslie (I was a fan of her “Batwoman”) have an authentically complicated rapport that makes it easy to invest in their joint journey. There’s enough justifiable animosity to keep it from being unrealistic and honest compassion to realize the person that anger should be targeting is Mark. Does it all feel convenient as a result? Sure. But there are enough loose threads (why isn’t John Cassini’s infamous Louis Strand leaving a pile of bodies in his wake) to keep us guessing even if the suspect pool is always the same group of three. Which ones are actually who they say they are and which are playing the game? Since Sharon and Jo are the only ones without any involvement, they can be the ones with the objectivity and reckless desire to reveal every skeleton possible. The stakes never rise high enough to wow the audience, but it’s a decent option for escapist melodrama on a rainy day of channel surfing.

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[L-R] Javicia Leslie as Jo Creuzot and Pascale Hutton as Sharon Setter in the Thriller, DOUBLE LIFE, a Paramount Global Content Distribution release. Courtesy of Paramount Global Content Distribution.