Henry Petosa and Freddy Ace are identical twins living in the fictional city of Empire with no knowledge of each other, separated at birth and placed for adoption.
Henry is a shy garage mechanic. He lives in a slum and loves Beverly Franks, his best friend's sister. He also baby-sits for his neighbor Rosie, a prostitute.
Freddy is a driver for Mr. Paris, a gangster. He is slick and self-confident, married to a materialistic woman named Sharon.
One day, a young woman named Sonya Kirk who works in a morgue accidentally comes across a letter indicating that the twins are actually the offspring of European nobility and owed a large sum of inheritance money. Sonya decides to play amateur detective and track them down.
It all leads to a confrontation between the surprised twins in a restaurant, a shootout and a final scene high above the Grand Canyon.
Twin child actors Jasen and Jereme Kane play the young version of Modine's characters, as well as appearing as the twin children in the restaurant at the end of the film.
The New York Times movie reviewer Stephen Holden had praise for the actors, saying Modine "does a fine job of differentiating between the two without resorting to caricature. He is especially good at showing how the repressed qualities of each twin peek through their surfaces. As Henry's sweetheart, Ms. Boyle exudes the right mixture of warm-blooded ardor and strait-laced defensiveness."[2]
References
^D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah (1st ed.). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN9781423605874.
