Maximum Risk

This has to be the best Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie he has made. It has it all, and it has it in spades. This movie is 100 minutes, and 95 of those are pure action.

You have great car chases through the streets of Nice and New York.

You have a whole lot of people the Government is not going to have to arrest and try because they will not be around.

You have three, count them three outstanding fights between Jean-Claude Van Damme and the biggest, baddest dude you can imagine.

And, you have Natasha Henstridge in the bathroom making love and giving us a view we will long remember.

What more can you ask for?

The plot is reasonably engaging and complex for a Van Damme film, with some fast-moving action sequences.

I agree with previous post, that Van Damme's acting does seem better in this film, although he still would not win any oscars!

In the end, the climax is unfortunately uninspiring, predictable, and true to form of any other action film.

He is beginning to look old, but still has a great physique, which I am sure why the demographic votes for this film show it most popular with the over 45 ladies!! ;-)

If you are a Van Damme fan, this is worth a look.

This Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle gets good marks for sound, low profanity, some very good action scenes and some interesting characters that keep your attention. It loses marks for excessive violence, too much "Rambo" mentality (good guys don't get hit despite a barrage of bullets) and, yet, another modern-day film in which the FBI is corrupt.

This is also another of these action films that has TOO much action. It would be better with some more lulls. It almost gets ridiculous in spots. Nevertheless, some of the scenes such as car chases, fires and explosions are so well-done you have to admire the great stunt work in here. Man, those stunt men earn their money!

You would be hard-pressed to find two leads in any film with the bodies of Van Damme and Natasha Henstridge and neither are shy about showing them off, so you have the usual gratuitous sex scenes, but they are brief, as is the profanity. This is a loud film. If you have good speakers, be ready to have the room shake with lots of bass.

Overall, it's about 100 minutes of mindless but entertaining diversion.

While not necessarily one of my favorites from his more "classic" collection (Bloodsport, Kickboxer, etc.), I give this one a lot of credit for creating an overall highly suspenseful experience, full of intense action/chase sequences, and with more of a story than many other action-oriented efforts in its class. The script by Larry Ferguson (writer of The Hunt for Red October and definitely one of the more respected people to pen a Van Damme movie) places storytelling over action setups and, in general, feels a bit smarter than the average Van Damme vehicle. There isn't any real mystery to the story, though: the revelation of Alain's brother and his affiliation with the Russian mafia is dealt with without too much buildup, and the story begins to revolve around Alain retreading his brother's unsuccessful steps to distance himself from the mob and escape from corrupt FBI agents. His relationship with his brother's old flame (Natasha Henstridge, Species) is interesting at first but is then more or less dropped into your lap. Nevertheless, the movie never loses a sense of suspense: Alain doesn't seem quite as empowered as other characters Van Damme was playing at the time, so it rarely seems impossible that he could be killed. Soundly-weighed production values by director Lam help set a good mood and the art direction is, at times, inspired.

The film features a pretty good cast, including Jean-Hugues Anglade (Betty Blue) as Alain's partner and David Hemblen (Exotica) in a limited role as the leader of the Russian mafia, but the unexpected dramatic moment of the picture belongs to Van Damme for a surprisingly adept instance of silent acting near the end of the movie wherein Alain listens to a recorded message by his late brother. Ringo Lam would continue to bring a little something extra out of Jean-Claude in the future, even directing him to his first-ever dramatic award nomination five years later, but "Maximum Risk" is probably the most palatable of all their collaborations for its all-around strengths and mainstream appeal.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

If you see only one Van Damme film...see Maximum Risk. It is a decent thriller, not just a martial arts flick. Unfortunately, after seeing how good Van Damme can be (yes, he can act - something we've yet to see from Stephen Seagal who he's usually compared to) it makes you sad to see how many bad films he's really made.