If your career as an action hero is starting to sag like a geriatric bosom and you need someone to give it an old-fashioned kick in the pants, perhaps you should turn to whichever pop culture moron is currently filling the airwaves with his or her 15 minutes of shame. For example, when it was time for martial arts guru Jean-Claude Van Damme to beef up his fan base, someone with a few too many prescription drugs at their disposal suggested basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman as the falling star's cinematic crutch. After all, Rodman was the "big thing" at the time, so why not use his popularity to help someone in desperate need of success? I've heard it works wonders.
The end result of this bizarre marriage of Hollywood muscle and tabloid celebrity is Tsui Hark's 1997 opus Double Team. If action pictures were susceptible to mental illness, this one would be crawling with attention deficit disorder. The film never really knows what it wants to be, so it tries to incorporate perhaps a few too many ambitious ideas into a slick 90-minute extravaganza. If you can suffer through the story's twists and turns without receiving a pounding headache from all the nifty explosions, you'll find a deliriously enjoyable Hong Kong action flick masquerading as a Tinsel Town production. Assuming, of course, that you can watch Dennis Rodman on-screen for longer than twenty seconds without retching into your microwave popcorn.
Van Damme stars as Jack Quinn, the film's proverbial "good guy." Since he's an international spy with decades of experience in the game, ol' Jack has an industry standard arch-enemy by the name of Stavros to pal around with, played by a slightly deformed Mickey Rourke. As it goes with such bitter rivalries, they enjoy fist-fighting at carnivals, tossing grenades at one another in close quarters, and exchanging gunfire in a room full of newborn babies. Typical espionage stuff. I'm sure there's a real-life agent out there right now, trading lethal blows with a rubbery martial arts expert while dozens of explosions erupt all around him.
Article comments
1 - Kaonashi
You are brilliant. Please tell me that you plan on reviewing Death Race 2000. I myself have reviewed it and would like to compare notes.
2 - T. Rigney
Death Race 2000, you say? I actually own that flick, so perhaps I'll watch it over the next few days and write it up. Nifty? Nifty.