The Scapegoat

CinemaSerf

The competent actor that is Matthew Rhys plays his own doppelgänger in this initially intriguing but ultimately rather flat thriller set in the UK just before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. "Standing" is a teacher who spends a night on the lash with his stunt double "Spence" - a man he had never seen before he bumped into randomly. Awakening next morning with a thick head, he finds "Spence" has fled taking his own identity with him. Before he has much chance to think things through, he finds himself subsumed into the identity of the other man - a wealthy, family man with plenty of skeletons in his closet. Was this all a stitch up? Is he being played? Well "Standing" has no way of knowing unless he immerses himself in his new life and hope that he can get to the truth before he is rumbled. Now I don't know about you, but if my husband came home one evening but he was his own identical twin I like to think I'd still be able to tell the difference? What also makes the premiss of this a bit persistently questionable is the ease with which he manages to impersonate a man about whom he knows nothing. I'm all for thinking on your feet, but this verges a bit too much on the preposterous and as it continued I really did lose interest. It does look good and presents a solid cast including Dame Eileen Atkins, Phoebe Nicholls and the usually reliable Anton Lesser, but for me the story hit the skids of far-fetchedness after about half an hour and left me largely disinterested.