Review by MrBrown
2½ stars out of 4
Van Damme. Rodman. Rourke. Not the recipe for disaster it appears
to be, thanks to Hong Kong action maestro Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in
China), whose brisk, stylish, and inventive direction keeps Double Team
moving fairly smoothly over some turbulent patches--but not smoothly enough.
One such turbulent patch is the preposterous plot. Jean-Claude Van
Damme plays Jack Quinn, a CIA operative who, after inadvertently causing the
death of the son of terrorist Stavros (Mickey Rourke), is sentenced to a
top-secret penal colony/think tank for dangerous agents. After a daring
escape, Quinn hooks up with flamboyant arms dealer Yaz (Dennis Rodman) to go
after Stavros.
The star of Double Team is not Van Damme nor Rodman but the action,
and Tsui, working with a number of HK luminaries such as Samo Hung, stage
some wild and exciting set pieces. One early sequence that begins in an
amusement park and ends in a hospital is more exciting and entertaining than
the endings of Van Damme's last four films combined (make that the
_entirety_ of those four films). Tsui reaches a delirious high with a manic
hotel room fight with a Chinese assassin (Xi Xi Xiong, a vet of Tsui's Once
Upon a Time series) who holds a knife with his toes, a scene that duplicates
the outrageous exuberance of the best HK productions.
But, as it stands, the great scenes are just that, good parts of a
mediocre whole; the talent of the director is not quite enough to make up
for the minimal ability exhibited by some of the other people working on the
production. The line of the plot cooked up by Don Jakoby and Paul Mones is
quite hokey, to say the least, and certain plot devices stretch credibility,
even for an action film, most notably how the heroes survive the finale
(oops, did I ruin it for some people?). Without giving the specifics away,
it makes me wonder just how much a certain company paid for such a
blatant--and, admittedly, creative--product placement. Even though Van
Damme thankfully has little dialogue to work with, when he does speak, he is
as wooden as ever. The big question here is whether or not hoopster Rodman
can act, and after seeing the film, I'm not completely sure. He plays a
variation of his own outrageous personality, which, naturally, he does well
enough; time will tell if he can actually play a character. The problem
with Rodman, however, is that he sticks out like a sore thumb throughout the
picture; his involvement is obvious stunt casting--a bit too much so. Not
helping matters at all are the numerous throwaway basketball references
served up by the scripters; they just serve to take the audience out of the
movie even more.
Double Team is certainly one of Van Damme's best, but in light of
his less-than-sterling body of work, that isn't saying a whole lot.
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out of 4
